rillRTY 3ERM0NS 

TO BoysAGirl,3 




LIBRARX OF CONGRESS, 

Shell, M4" 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




C ON GRE G ATION AL HU RC H, 

DAVENPORT, [<)WA. 



THIRTY SERMONS 



BOYS AND GIRLS 



Congregational Church 



DAVENPORT, IOWA. 



7 ' &* *&***• SN#*> %-A- 9: 



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CHICAGO: 

Thk Western Sunday- School Publishing Co. 
1879. 



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-&l*\ 

M4 



oh Congress 

WASHINGTON 



COPYRIGHTED BY 

The Western Sunday-School Publishing Company. 
1879. 



TO 

£fc« make* 

OF 

THREE BOYS AND TWO GIRLS, 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
IS DEDICATED BY HER OLDEST SON. 



"Her children arise up and call her bless<d. J 



PREFACE. 



The welcome given to a little volume of children's 
sermons, published two years ago, has induced their 
author to print a new series of similar discourses, under 
the title of " Sermons to Boys and Girls," a name which 
in his preaching he has come to give them. 

That a large number of the younger ministers of 
the United States have adopted this plan of preaching a 
short sermon every Sunday to the young, affords substan- 
tial reason for hoping that the question is being solved, 
" How can the boys and girls be induced to attend church ?" 

If this little book aids in solving this question, if it 
makes any boys and girls become better men and women, 
or assists parents in rearing their children for the king- 
dom, its author's highest wishes will be met. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



i . — Four Kinds of Boys and Girls, 9 

2. — Keep out of Bad Company, 14 

3. — The Brand on the Con science, 19 

4. — Paula Boy, 26 

5. — King Josiah, 30 

6. — No Harm in Being Young,. 35 

7. — What Short Boys and Girls Should Do, 40 

8. — Strive to Enter in at the Strait Gate, 45 

9. — Almost and Altogether, 51 

10. — The Right Time, 55 

11. — Christ's Ambassador 60 

12. — The Glorious Gospel, . 65 

13. — The Singing Army, 70 

14. — The Praying King, 75 

15. — How to Keep Sunday, 80 

16. — Behavior in Church, 85 

17. — The Contribution Box, 90 

18. — New Year's Greeting, 95 

19. — Spring Sermon for 1878, 100 

20. — " " " 1879, 104 

21. — Easter Sermon for 1878, 109 

22. — " " " 1879, IJ 4 

23. — A Thanksgiving Day Sermon, 119 

24. — Forefathers' Day Sermon, 123 

25. — Christmas Sermon, 127 

26. — Temperance, 131 

27. — Home Missionary Sermon, 135 

28. — Foreign Missionary Sermon 140 

29. — Trust and Fear, 145 

30. — Victory over Death, 150 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 



FOUR KINDS OF BOYS AND GIRLS. 



Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judg- 
ment, and some men they follow after. Likewise also the good 
works of some are manifest beforehand, and they that are other- 
wise cannot be hid. — I. Tim. v., 24, 25. 

Timothy was the minister of the Church at 
Ephesus. There were some of the officers of 
the Church whom he had to watch very closely, 
and might have to rebuke. In order to do this, 
he would need to understand human nature well, 
and hence in the two verses which I have read he 
is told how different different kinds of men are 
— a fact that others beside him need to know. 

I remember when I went to college with my 
younger brother, soon after we got there, the 
president sent for us to come and see him. He 
talked to us quite a little while, but the only 
thing that 1 recall of what he said was, " Be 



10 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

careful in the choice of your friends ; you will 
do well to summer and winter a man before you 
become his fast friend." And that is one of the 
lessons of your text, that it takes time to find 
out what another person is; and boys and girls 
would get on better in life if they would remem- 
ber this. 

Once in a while you see a boy whom at first 
you suppose to be bad ; he is not good looking, 
his manners are not good; he has a brusque way, 
and when you come to know him better you 
find that you are not mistaken. The more you 
learn about him, the worse you find him to be. 
He is a bad boy in the fourth grade, and when 
he gets into the fifth the teachers and scholars 
cannot help having heard that he was trouble- 
some and ugly, and all are sorry to see him. He 
is one of those of whom your text speaks when 
it says, "Some men's sins are open beforehand." 

On the other hand, I have known of a little 
girl moving into a neighborhood, and in the 
course of a day or two a child who has always 
lived there comes running home from school 
quite out of breath, and hardly waits to be po- 
lite to her mother before she cries out, " Oh! 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 11 

there is such a nice girl moved into 843 ! She 
has such beautiful eyes and hair, and wears a 
great many nice new gowns; she is just splendid. 
Are n't you glad that I am going to have such a 
playmate?" Mother does not say much. But 
after a while she finds that her little girl is not as 
good as she used to be; does not mind as quick- 
ly, or speak the truth, and uses coarse words. 
She wonders at it. She dosn't think it can be 
because she goes so much with the new little 
neighbor, for she appears like a little lady; but 
at length, by keeping close watch with eye and 
ear, she finds that the little miss is one of those 
who appear very nicely, but who, as the text 
says, " have their sins coming after them." 

But there is a better side to all this, as we 
shall see in the last part of your text, where it 
says the good works of some are manifest 
beforehand; by which it means that some chil- 
dren cannot help showing that they are good. 
Their faces tell the story to everybody whom 
they meet. When they come into the school- 
room the teacher looks at them, and says, 
" They will never give me any trouble, I know; 
what nice faces they have ; how good their man- 



12 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

ners are. They must have a careful mother at 
home, and a father whom they love and obey." 
And yet the teacher waits a while to see if she 
has made a mistake; and when, after several 
weeks have gone by, and the children have had 
their lessons well, and have kept all the rules of 
the school, and have been well-behaved on the 
playground, then she is glad to feel that there 
are some bright, true faces, which have just as 
bright and true hearts behind them. 

But once in a while there is another kind of 
boys and girls. They are like gems that have 
been hid among the rubbish; but if they are real 
gems they will be found out, for your text says 
such cannot be hid. And have you not found 
children that are sometimes ragged, overgrown, 
awkward boys, who turn out to be the brightest 
scholars? and some little fellow who is very 
quiet, and who you think has no spirit, showing 
himself braver and more courageous than some 
of the larger and noisier boys? Some of the 
very greatest men and women of America, when 
they were children, were not thought to be 
much. 

So you see, children, there are four kinds of 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 13 

people in the world — those who look wicked, 
and are so; those who appear good, and are not 
so; those who have good faces, and hearts to 
match; and those who are good inside, but it 
takes time to rind them out. 

You must therefore be very careful about 
your companions, and try not to judge them 
wrongly, nor to let them cheat you. And be 
careful all the while to remember that we all 
should avoid the bad, and cleave to those who 
are good. 



KEEP OUT OF BAD COMPANY! 



From such withdraw yourself. — I. Tim., vl, 5. 

This rule, given to Timothy, is just the rule 
that Jehoshaphat, of whom your to-day's Bible 
lesson teaches, did not obey. He was a good 
and wise man in the main — pious, gentle, just, 
with a good mind and a strong body. But he 
lacked firmness, could not say " no." He went 
on a visit to a wicked king, and while there was 
persuaded to unite his army with the army 
of King Ahab. They went into battle; his 
fellow king was killed, and he himself hard- 
ly escaped with his life. When he returned 
home, God's prophet met him, and said, 
" Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love 
them that hate the Lord? Therefore is wrath 
upon thee from before the Lord." 

The same lesson is taught in the first Psalm. 
You remember what it says : "Blessed is the 
man that walketh not in the counsel of the 
ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor 
sitteth in the seat of the scornful." Paul said, 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 15 

in another place beside the text, " Mark evil 
men, and avoid them," and in another place still 
gave the same advice : " Note them, and have 
no company with them." 

And I have, in my short lifetime, seen many 
a boy, who has turned out badly simply because 
he associated with bad boys, and could n't say 
" no." 

But the world is full of boys and girls who 
are wicked. They go to public school and to 
private schools, and some of them to Sunday 
school, and you may not know how to with- 
draw from them. 

ist. You need not be uncivil toward the very 
worst boy or girl that you know. If they say 
" good morning," you should make a polite an- 
swer. Some one rebuked George Washington for 
being polite to a colored man who had touched 
his hat to him. He replied that he was not 
going to have a negro outdo him in politeness. 
We can be polite, and yet not be friendly. 

2d. You need not feel unkindly toward those 
who are wicked. You should not wish them 
harm. You ought to be very glad if they learn 
to be good and become better. 



16 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

3d. You cannot safely make such children 
your friends. If one of your playmates swears, 
you will, if you have him for a fast companion 
or friend, be almost as sure to become profane 
as you would to catch the mumps or measels or 
whooping cough if he should have any of these 
diseases. And the same is true of any other 
bad habit; they are all catching, and very few 
of us can be much with those who have them 
without catching them. 

The only safe way is to keep just as far as 
possible from any companions who would do you 
harm; for, as that psalm says, after you walk 
awhile with bad company, then you come to 
want to stand by worse company, and at last 
you sit down and make yourself at home with 
the very worst. It is then very difficult to get 
away from them. You will be safer to keep out- 
side of a rut, rather than to trust to your good 
luck to get out after once you are in. 

There never was a boy yet who got into 
trouble from bad companions, who had any 
expectation that he could be persuaded to do 
what he came to do. The way to keep from 
taking the last step which means ruin, is, never 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 17 

to take the first one; and the moment you are 
persuaded that the boy or girl who wants to be 
your friend tells lies, swears, cheats in marbles, 
speaks unclean words, leave off associating with 
him. 

4th. But Jehoshaphat got into trouble worse 
and worse, because he joined hands with his 
wicked friend in carrying on his pet schemes. 
Now, it may have been all right for the kings 
of your Sunday-school lesson to make war against 
a common enemy, but it was wrong for a good 
king to become the ally of a bad one. And I 
am quite sure that the way in which bad boys 
and girls will try and lead you Christian boys 
and girls along will be by getting you to be 
with them in doing something that is all right 
in itself. They will know enough not to ask 
you to do anything that is mean and wicked, 
but will want you to go with them into some- 
thing that very likely your father and mother 
will approve. 

But you will do well to remember that God 
is not willing that we should help those who, 
while we are helping them., will do all they can 
to keep us from living the good and the true. 



18 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

A dog, on a time, went visiting his cousin the 
fox, a thing that the older dogs had often told 
him not to do. He found his cousin very glad 
to see him, and accepted his invitation to go out 
and hunt some chickens for supper. While on 
the way the fox talked very wisely about 
chickens being good to eat, and looked so very 
handsome that the little dog was very proud ot 
his company. All this time the fox was intend- 
ing to steal his supper. They came to the farm- 
yard, whence he had stolen many a chicken 
before. But this time they fell into the trap 
that the farmer had set, and the dog, too late, 
learned that he should withdraw from such 
company. 



THE BRAND ON THE CONSCIENCE. 



" Their conscience seared with a hot iron." — I. Tim., iv., 2. 

In the time of the war, when the government 
of the United States had bought a drove of 
horses, a man with an iron instrument, which, 
after being heated, would burn through the hair 
and skin, used in this way to mark all the ani- 
mals with the two letters U and S, and after 
that everybody knew that the government 
owned them. 

This is called putting on a brand, and is the 
same thing which the Apostle meant in your 
text when he wrote about a conscience seared 
by a hot iron. So you see I am to talk about a 
brand on the conscience. 

(1) Who -puts on this brand? It is Satan, 
who wants in this way to make sure of all 
whom he can catch by his wiles. -He wants to 
have ever} 7 body know that there is a world full 
ot people belonging to him. 

(2) He tries his best to -put a brand upon 

19 



20 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

the children. He knows that a brand grows as 
people grow. You have seen, perhaps, a scar 
on my little finger. It came from a cut that I 
made with a sickle twenty-two years ago. It 
was not as long then as it is now, but, as my fin- 
ger grew longer, the scar grew longer. I have 
seen a tree with a great mark upon its side, and 
have learned that when the tree was young 
some one had cut off a limb or made a gash 
through the bark. 

(3) Satan knotvs that it is hard for a man 
with a brand to rub it outj often it is impossi- 
ble. Cain thought it was dreadful when he had 
to go through the world with a mark upon his 
forehead by which all who met him would know 
that he was a murderer. What would he have 
given if he could only have made his forehead 
smooth again? I had a teacher once who I 
noticed always tried to hide his hand, on which 
there was a dreadful scar, made by a fight in 
which he was engaged when a wild boy in col- 
lege. I have seen men who have tried to make 
the whiskers grow over an ugly mark on the 
face by which all could tell that they had been 
mean or wicked. There are some men who 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 21 

have been willing to tear a large piece out of 
their flesh to get rid of a scar which, every time 
they saw it, would tell over a story that they 
would be only too glad to forget. 

(4) But it is of more importance than all I 
have told you, to learn how Satan puts the 
brand upon the children's consciences. I will 
tell you a few of the ways. 

He tempts one of you to tell a lie. You tell 
it, and then there is a mark upon your con- 
science which says to you: I belong to Satan, 
for I have lied, and he is the father of lies. He 
tempts a boy to swear,, and then, if he swears, a 
brand is put upon that boy's conscience. Every- 
body who heard the oath could say, That is 
Satan's mark. He tries to persuade another boy 
to neglect becoming a Christian, to say '*no " 
when a kind friend asks him to be a follower of 
Jesus, and another mark is made which binds 
him to the Evil One. 

And another thing which you all ought to re- 
member: when the brand has been put on, it is 
harder to do right than before. When you have 
made one blot on your copybook, it is much 
more easy to make a second, and then more 



22 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

easy a third, and so on. When you have had 
one tardy mark at school, you do not care half 
as much for the second as you did for the first. 
In the same way a child that has begun to tell 
lies, to swear, to leave off praying, going to 
Sunday school or church, finds it more and more 
easy to do that which, before he had done it 
once, he would not have thought he could ever 
have done at all. 

But there is another thought. It is that, 
although Satan may have put his brand upon 
you, Jesus stands ready and waiting to take 
you back and put His mark upon you. And, 
although you may have to wear the scar that 
Satan's brand made, it will not keep Jesus- from 
loving you as long as you are trying to love 
Him. He has prepared a robe that will cover 
the scar on your conscience, and He will put His 
mark upon your forehead. But what would you 
give if you could be rid of the scar while you 
have His mark. 

A long time ago I heard the story of a boy 
who was so bad that his father had to try every 
way to correct him. At last he told his son that 
for every bad act he should drive a nail in his 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 25 

room. Soon the room was full of nails. His 
father said : " Now, my boy, for each good 
thing you will do I will pull out a nail." The 
boy tried very hard, and at last all the nails 
were pulled out. The father said: " Arn't you 
glad to see the last nail out?" 

"But," said the boy, "the holes tell the story 
of my bad life." 

Boys and girls, be careful that Satan does not 
brand you! 



PAUL A BOY. 



When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, 
I thought as a child. — I. Cor., xiii., 11. 

If we did not have Paul's word for it, it 
would be very hard for us to believe that he 
was a genuine boy, such a boy as some whom 
we see in Davenport. But the grand Apostle, 
who could argue like the best of lawyers ; could 
preach like the best of ministers; could go 
through shipwreck like the bravest of sailors; 
could be whipped nearly to death rather than do 
wrong; who, as we think of him, had the keen- 
est of eyes, shaggy eyebrows, firm lip — a stern 
looking man — said: "When I was a child I 
spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
thought as a child." 

Paul, then, was a real boy, not a little old man 
in boy's clothes, nor one who liked girls' plays; 
but full of life and innocent fun, such a boy as 
you would like to have come and spend the 
vacation with you. Let us take a look at him 
when he was about ten years old, with his curly 



26 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 27 

black hair and black eyes. His mother calls 
him; he starts right away, but instead of walk- 
ing he has to turn two or three summersaults, 
leap a fence or two ; but for all these antics he is 
by her side quicker than any grown person could 
have gone over the distance that he went. She 
gives him an errand to do; he hears every word, 
and, as soon as she is through, off he goes to do 
as she bade. Whistling the liveliest tune that 
he knows, he does the errand promptly, but we 
conclude that he has met Judah and Benjamin, 
and Moses and David, who, not very long after 
he reaches home, are there also. With mother's 
leave, they have a game at hide-and-seek, and 
Paul runs the fastest and hides the most wisely 
of them all. Then they try leap-frog and other 
games. By-and-by they quiet themselves, so 
as to get cooled, for Paul has proposed to the 
rest to go in swimming in the Tigris river, the 
water of which is very cold. When they are 
cool, they all go to Paul's mother and ask if they 
can go in swimming. She sees that they are 
not too warm, tells them they must not stay in 
too long, and off they go in a hurry to have such 
a swim as children only can have. At the right 



28 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

time Paul is home; has done the work that 
belongs to him ; has said his prayers and gone to 
bed; and no sooner is he in bed than he falls 
asleep, even before his mother has had time to 
come in and kiss her boy good- night; but for all 
that she looks at her sleeping son, brushes the 
hair off his forehead, and then, kneeling down 
by the bed, asks God to bless her boy; and, as 
she does it, she thinks over all her boy's days, 
full of life and sport, and believes that he will 
grow up into a strong, good man. 

But it was not all vacation days for Paul. He 
went to school most of the time; and, as he sat 
on the floor, with the rest of the scholars and 
the teacher, sometimes his back would ache, 
and he would wish that he could go out of doors 
and into the fields; but he did not think much 
about it, for Paul was a good scholar, and stood 
at the head of his class; and his father had told 
him that if he made good use of his time he 
should have a chance of going to the best school 
that the land could afford. 

And yet when school was out Paul was ready 
for all the play that he could crowd into the time 
that was given him. I wish that we could have 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 29 

seen him in the games that he played; when he 
prepared a place where the boys could run a 
race, and had them all at another time lire their 
slings, or use their bows and arrows; especially 
in their contests with slings, for all his ancestors 
were familiar in using the sling; and there was 
nothing that pleased Paul more than to hear his 
father read in the Bible how, long, long before 
he was born, his great-great-great-grandfathers 
could sling at a hair and not miss. 

But with all his love for fun and sport, Paul 
never did a mean thing; he never would cheat 
or lie in his games, swear, or use any filthy 
words, or do anything that he would have been 
ashamed to have his mother know. He always 
took the part of those who were in trouble ; and, 
so long as he was thus noble and true, his father 
and mother were wise in letting him be a real 
boy while he was a boy, for in that way he 
would be a true man when he came to be a 
man. 



KING JOSIAH. 



" Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he 
reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years." — II. Chron., 
xxxiv., i. 

There are, I suppose, ten or fifteen children 
here this morning who are not far from eight 
years old. They are about four feet tall, weigh 
between fifty and sixty-five pounds, wear jack- 
ets or short dresses — a happy set of children. 
Now, if one of these boys should have a gold 
crown on his head, and wear a rich robe instead 
of a jacket, and carry a handsome sceptre in his 
hand, he would perhaps look like Josiah, King of 
Judah, who was king when he was eight years 
old. But, although having the crown and the 
robe could not make you a real king, you can be 
something better than king by being a good 
child, as was Josiah, of whom the Bible says: 
" He did that which was right in the sight of 
the Lord, and turned neither to the right hand 
nor to the left." 

There have been other child kings — Joash at 

30 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 31 

seven years; Henry III. and Edward VI. of 
England at nine; Louis XIII. of France at nine? 
and Charles X. at ten, and others; but of all 
these it could not be said that they did right. 
And I am afraid that it could not he said of all 
the children here, about this age, that they do 
right. 

It must have kept Josiah from having many a 
good time to have been king so young. He had 
to have great cares, and must have been a sober 
little fellow all the time, and I have no doubt but 
that you are happier than he was, and, if only 
you are as good, would have no wish to change 
places with him. 

There are, I think, not far from fifteen persons 
in this house to-day who are sixteen years old; 
they are most of them over five feet tall, weigh 
over one hundred pounds, have fresh, bright 
faces, and perhaps some of the boys would do 
to stand beside Josiah, of whom your Sabbath- 
school lesson says: a In the eighth year of his 
reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek 
after the Lord " — that is, he began to inquire 
what he could do for the Lord. And I am very 
glad to know that almost all ol you who are 



32 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

sixteen have made up your minds that you will 
be Christians, and are trying to be true Chris- 
tians. But, more than that, when you are six- 
teen it is about time to make up your mind what 
you are going to do for Christ; whether you 
will be a Christian teacher, or storekeeper, or 
carpenter, or bookkeeper, or minister. You can- 
not tell much before sixteen what you can do. 
I know a little boy who thought when he was 
three years old that he would like to sell grapes; 
when he was four, that he would make a street- 
car driver; when he was seven, that he would be 
a preacher; but when he gets to be sixteen he 
can tell better what he is good for, and, although 
he may not even then be able to tell just what 
he can do best, he can make up his mind to do 
all he can to serve God. 

And one thing you who are sixteen can learn 
from the youthful king: You can get advice and 
help from those who are older and wiser than 
you. I know that most young folks think they 
know all that it is necessary to know. They 
make a great mistake. Josiah had a great many 
good men to ask advice of — the high priest, his 
minister, the secretary of state, who could tell 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 33 

him how to act as king; the mayor of the city, 
who could help him in looking after the town; 
and a good woman by the name of Huldah, who 
would tell him of the future, for she was a 
prophetess. And any of you sixteen-years-old 
boys and girls can be sure that if you are well- 
behaved, trying to do the right thing, that the 
men and women whom you know will be very 
glad to do all they can to make men and women 
of you; and any of you who would come to me 
and ask me what I thought you were best fitted 
to do, would learn that I would take all the pains 
I could to tell you. 

But I am going to talk to some who are older, 
to-day, as though they were children — to the 
young men and women of twenty. Let me see 
how you look. Most of you are as tall as you 
ever will be. The young men have, some of 
them, beards, and look as though they were 
equal to any work; the young women are the 
pride of the houses they live in, and some of 
them, although too young to do it, are thinking 
of houses of their own. Let us see what Josiah 
was doing at that age. u In the twelfth year of 
his reign he began to purge Judah of its idola- 



34 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

try." How I wish that I had twenty young 
men and women of this stamp! At the age of 
twenty ready to settle down to the real business 
of life, to take a place in prayer-meeting, to 
carry an unflinching piety into the schoolroom, 
behind the counter, to the desk. If there were 
twenty such young people in this church, caring, 
first of all, to be heart)', earnest Christians, I 
should be the happiest man in Davenport. 

Children, if you want to have it said of you 
at last, " He did right in the sight of the Lord, 
turning neither to the right or the left," you 
must, like the boy king, do right when you are 
eight, when you are sixteen, and when you are 
twenty; and there will be but little danger but 
that you will keep on from that time to the end, 
doing right. 



NO HARM IN BEING YOUNG. 



'' Let no man despise thy youth." — I. Tim., iv., 12. 

The man who received the letter in which 
these words were written was about thirty-eight 
years old at the time, not very young, to be 
sure, but much younger than many members of 
the church of which he was pastor. But as Paul 
had to.ld Pastor Timothy to talk pretty plainly 
to some of the members of the church who had 
been behaving badly, he tells him to behave him- 
self in such a way that no one could think of 
saying, You are too young to advise or command 
us. And I think it will not do any of us harm 
to learn that we can be worth so much that our 
age will be nothing against us. 

There are some boys and girls who imagine 
that people do not think enough of them. I 
know one who had not gotten through two years 
in a city high school, who would not work with 
his hands, although he needed the money that 
hard work would bring; and all the while he 



36 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

was complaining that he was not appreciated in 
his ambition to be a lawyer and was dream- 
ing of the time when, as a lawyer, he could have 
men take off their hats to him. But all of us, 
who are older than such a boy, know that he 
will never make a lawyer, or anything other of 
a man, so long as he has such notions in his 
head; and he will not only be despised when 
young, but when he is old. 

Here is another boy who wants to get an 
education. He is poor, but during the summer 
he will work in the fields from sunrise to school 
time, and in the winter no work is beneath him 
that he can do to earn all he can for the family ; 
and although he has to be seen once in a while 
with rough work-clothes on, and while at work 
his hands and face are dirty, he is honored, and 
will be so long as he has such a spirit, no matter 
what his age may be. 

There are so many young people who appear 
to think that the way to be respected is to ape 
those who are older, and, even though they ape 
their follies, it makes them feel as though they 
had become men and women by the means. 

I have seen boys who appeared to think that 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 37 

if only they could smoke a cigar it would be the 
making of them; that no one after that could 
look down on them. I have known some others 
who would go to the druggists and buy some- 
thing to make whiskers grow on their smooth 
faces; and some girls appear to feel that they 
would be more respected if their dresses were 
only longer, or their cloaks more after the pat- 
tern of their mothers'. And, worse than these 
foolish notions, I have seen some boys, and a 
very few girls, who were willing to be wicked 
that people might think that they were old 
enough to amount to something. They will 
swear and tell that which they know is not 
true. 

Now, any of you who imagine that any such 
methods as these will keep men from despising 
you, are making a great mistake. All sensible 
and good people will be disgusted at such ac- 
tions, and, what is more, even bad people de- 
spise any one who tries so hard to be bad. 

The secret of not being despised, and hence 
of being honored, is in being so thoroughly wor- 
thy that all will gladly honor and respect you, 
and the more the younger you are. 



38 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

Don't you know that there is a little fellow- 
down town who works hard all the week, and 
when Saturday night comes carries all his wages 
to his mother? and not a week passes, as he faith- 
fully performs his work, without some one say- 
ing, "What a manly boy that is 1" and I don't 
believe he is five feet tall, and no one ever saw 
him strut to try to be taller than he is. But all 
boys are not like him. There are too many who 
have learned to like whisky, and how to bet and 
swear; and everybody, whose opinion is worth 
anything, says, " What foolish young chaps those 
are." 

The fact is, that the only thing which you 
should fear is, lest you should do that which 
ought to be despised, not that you will be de- 
spised because you are young. And, if you hap- 
pen to live in a town where the people have 
fallen into wicked ways, and where those who 
are mean are honored, remember that the praise 
of fools is not worth the getting, and that your 
text does not say let not fools despise you, nor 
silly men nor women, but let no man, no true 
man, no one whose opinion is worth anything, 
despise you. And you may be quite sure that 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 39 

you will be honored so long as you respect your- 
selves and do that which will please God. For, 
as the wise man has said, " He that followeth 
after righteousness findeth honor." 



WHAT SHORT BOYS AND GIRLS SHOULD DO. 



And he coulJ not, because he was little of st iture. — Luke, 
xix., 3. 

When I was a boy I had but very few books. 
Children's books were not plenty then. But 
there was one book which I owned so long ago 
that I cannot tell when it was given to me, and 
that book I could almost say by heart. It had 
pictures in it that seemed to me very beautiful, 
and verses that I thought exceeding fine. Your 
Sunday-School lesson to-day has reminded me 
of one of these pictures, and this was the verse 
that went with it: 

"Zaccheus, he 
Did climb a tree, 
His Lord to see.'' 

And your text tells why Zaccheus climbed the 
tree. It was because he was short. Now, you 
boys and girls are short, and if, like Zaccheus, 
you want to see Jesus, you may have to climb 
higher than you now are. 

There are no trees that will help you, but I 

40 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 41 

can tell you some other ways to see the Lord. 
One way is to climb into father's or mother's 
arms. Once in a while you are in a great crowd; 
you want to see the noted man whom all the 
rest are looking at. You cannot see anything 
but men's coats and women's dresses. You 
might as well be at home. Papa sees you are 
in trouble, reaches down, takes you in his arms ; 
your head is as high as anybody's, and you can 
see all that there is to see. 

So if any of you want to see Jesus, that is, to 
know more about him, just take hold of father's 
hand and tell him what you want, and he will 
take you up at once, and let you see all that he 
can see. And there is even a better place than 
that; many of you have climbed there often; 
it is upon your mother's knee; and, as you sat 
there and heard her talk about Jesus, you have 
learned to love the Saviour. 

Another place to climb is beside your Sun- 
day-School teacher. A Sunday-School teacher, 
like any other teacher, is some one who has 
gone a little longer or farther in the way up to 
knowledge than the scholar. Learning any- 
thing is like climbing up a hill, it takes hard 



42 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

work. I think it must have been hard for Zac- 
cheus to have climbed the tree. 

To see Jesus now-a-days we all have to climb 
above man}/ things that please us, we have to 
get above many wrong habits. This takes 
hard work. Your teacher will be glad to help 
you. 

In my old home, in New England, I used to 
like nothing much better than the day when 
teachers and scholars went into the woods. 
These were on the mountain and hill sides, and 
now and then we would come to a steep ledge 
of rocks, higher than my head. I should have 
been unable to go any farther had not the 
teacher reached down his hand and helped me 
up, and he seemed just as glad to do it for me 
as I was to have him do it. And you may be 
sure that if you want any help in finding 
Jesus, no one will be more glad to help you 
than is your Sunday-School teacher, the very 
one who has prayed this morning that you 
might want to be led nearer to Jesus. 

Another way to climb to a place where you 
can see Jesus, is to follow your minister. The 
best name that a minister can have is pastor, 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 43 

and that word means one who feeds others, 
generally sheep or lambs; and, if your minister is 
a true pastor, he is doing all he can to lead you 
to the Great Shepherd. I said you must follow 
him, for he is trying to lead you, not to drive 
you. And you all know that your pastor loves 
his flock, and especially does he love the lambs, 
you little ones that are so lively and happy; 
and he wants to have you come at last into the 
safe fold where Jesus is. 

Do you think there is anything that could 
please a shepherd more, when he is climbing up 
toward the fold, and trying to make all the 
flock follow, than to have one of the little lambs 
walk very near him, and seem to be glad to 
get along as fast as he could? As long as I am 
your pastor, children, I hope that you will find, 
by following me, you will climb nearer to 
Jesus. 

But there is something better than father, 
mother, teacher, or minister, to help you to 
see Jesus, it is Jesus himself. 

Don't you remember how little children 
were brought one day to the Lord? And he 
put his hands on them, and blessed them, and 



44 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

hav n 1 t you often seen pictures of the children 
sitting on His knee? And do you not think 
they could see Jesus then better than Zaccheus 
could from the tree? They could look right 
into his eyes, and could hear every word he 
said, as he told them, " Suffer little children to 
come unto me." 



STRIVE TO ENTER IN AT THE STRAIT GATE. 



" Strive to enter in at the strait gate." — Luke xiii, 24. 

I had a vision, and in my dream I was on a 
very large island. There were mountains, riv- 
ers, plains and meadows, towns and cities, and 
it was filled with all kinds of people, young and 
old, rich and poor. It seemed to me a beautiful 
place to live in, on the morning that I first saw 
it, and the people who first spoke to me were 
very polite and kind. I thought that I would 
like to make my home there, and stay forever 
in such a place. 

But it was not long before I learned that there 
were many unpleasant things about the island. 
In the first place it was very certain that at no 
very distant day the island was to be destroyed 
by a huge volcano or burning mountain; then, 
too, I learned that the air was bad, that no one 
could live there more than one hundred years, and 
most died very much short of that age, and after 



46 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

that no one saw them, although it was com- 
monly supposed that they, very many of them, 
went to a far off land where wickedness and 
sorrow abound, it seemed to me therefore a very 
sad thing that I had come to such a place, for 
so far as I could at first learn, there seemed to 
be only two things possible to do, to stay on the 
island until it was destroyed, or by dying be 
taken to a place vastly worse. 

But while I was thinking over this, I heard a 
man talking very earnestly to a few people who 
had gathered about him. I went near and heard 
him say, "My friends, you need not remain 
here and be destroyed on the island, nor need 
you go to the awful land to which so many from 
this place have gone, and where they must al- 
ways stay in sadness and gloom. On yonder 
mainland is a beautiful castle with grounds 
about it larger by far than a thousand such 
islands as this. In that delightful abode all are 
perfectly happy, and are to be happy forever. 
And to-day I have come to tell you that the 
owner of the palace has built a bridge from 
your island to the mainland, and wants to have 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 47 

all the people who will cross over it and be 
safe. Are there any of you who will go with 
me to the beautiful land?" 

It seemed to me that I could hardly wait un- 
til he was through talking that I might give my 
name to the company which he was trying to 
form, who were to start ' at once for the palace 
of the king. And you may be sure that I was 
very much surprised to find that I was almost 
the only one of those who heard him speak, who 
was ready to go. And very soon I found the 
reason, for in talking to the man who had been 
speaking, he said, a you know, I suppose, that 
we cannot cross the bridge to-day; that we must 
wait for a messenger from the king, who will 
call us to his palace; and, meanwhile, you must 
go with me into a narrow path that leads to the 
bridge, and very likely you will find it hard 
work to walk in the narrow way." 

"But, surely," said I, "it is good sense to 
walk in this way, however hard it may be, if 
only at last it brings me to the bridge, and by 
that to the palace of the king." 

"You are quite right," said the man, "and I 



48 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

will take you at once to the narrow gate which 
stands at the head of the narrow way." 

I came to the gate and found that it was in- 
deed a very narrow one. It was very plain 
to be seen when once it was found, and I am 
quite sure that any, however small or ignor- 
ant, could have found it if they only had tried, 
while most people who are busy or care- 
less, thinking about something else, would I am 
quite sure fail to see it and pass it by. It was 
very, very short, so that all but children had to 
stoop to enter it, and it seemed to me that it 
ought to have been short, for to stoop is only 
one way of showing that we are humble, and 
surely all the people on the island had reason 
enough to be ashamed, to be humble, on account 
of the wrong things they had done. Then it was 
only a little space between the posts, large enough 
to let any man in by himself, but too narrow by 
far to admit a great many who were not willing 
to go in unless they could take great bags of 
gold, great trunks of fine clothes ; while some 
seemed to think that the gate and the way and 
the bridge ought to have been wide enough to 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 49 

let in the house they lived in and all their other 
property. But as the man told me, when they 
came to the bridge they would find that they 
could not take a step upon it unless they left 
every single thing behind them, so that the king 
made it a rule to have the gate and the way 
just like the bridge, narrow, just wide enough 
for one to walk alone. 

I watched to see who went through the gate 
and along the way, and I found that they were 
the best men and women that could be found on 
the island; they were kind in their faces and 
gentle in their words ; they had money to give 
to those who needed it, and help to fall who 
asked for it. 

There were some, a great many, who pre- 
tended to be walking in the way and expected 
to go across the bridge, who had not gone 
through the gate. They really thought more 
of the nice houses on the island than of the pal- 
ace; more of being called great and good than 
of really being good. They will feel very, very 
badly, when the prince shall say: "I never 
knew you." 



5 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

But one thing pleased me very greatly. I saw 
that there were many children who easily went 
through the gate, and grew strong and great 
and good as they walked in the way, and when 
they were called to the palace the sound of their 
welcome came over the sea that lay between. 



ALMOST AND ALTOGETHER. 



"Almost and altogether." — Acts, xxvi, 29. 

These words begin alike, but how differently 
they end! And now that you children are on 
one or the other of these roads at the head of 
which one or the other of these words stands, I 
want you all to be of those who have left the 
almost, and become the altogether. 

There are some things in respect of which 
you should not be either almost or altogether. 
You would not like to have anybody say of you, 
" He is altogether cruel, untruthful, or mean." 
Neither would you want to have it said that 
you were almost a thief, or a coward, or a 
sneak. 

But in our text both the words point in the 
right direction. The trouble is, however, that 
one is not wholly right. Go down to the depot 
some day, and you will see between Brady and 
Perry streets a man whose business it is to pull 
a lever or switch, and thus keep the trains on 

51 



52 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

the right tracks. Here comes the train from 
the West, the Overland Pacific Express. The 
man has the switch altogether right, and the 
engine, with its splendid coaches, marches 
grandly into the depot. But suppose he is sat- 
isfied with having his work almost right, the 
engine can't be stopped until it has run into a 
sleeping-car that stands upon a side track, and 
two men are killed, because the switch-tender 
was almost, not altogether, right. 

Here are two men who are expecting to be 
chosen mayor of the city. They both have a 
great many friends, and votes enough are prom- 
ised so that each hopes to have the office; but 
when the day comes, a friend of one of the men 
forgets to vote until five minutes too late, so 
that his friend is an almost mayor, not alto- 
gether one. And he will tell you that there is 
a very great difference between the two. 

You are trying to get a hundred every day 
in school; you get along nicely several days, 
but at last your seat-mate gets you to playing, 
you fail to learn one lesson, and you have to 
become almost, instead of altogether, a perfect 
scholar. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 53 

Now, what is true of the school boy, of the 
man who wants to be mayor, and of the train, 
is true in the case of those who are going to- 
ward Heaven, the almost Christian and the 
altogether Christian children. 

They both go to church and prayer-meeting; 
they both are obedient to their parents, and 
kind to their mothers and sisters; they both are 
good scholars, truthful, honest, well-behaved, 
gentlemanly and lady-like. 

But one of them has done as God asked, 
given Him his heart; the other has not; and 
that makes them altogether different. 

A few years ago over on the Island were two 
men, both tall, broad-shouldered, strong, fine 
looking; both were brave, truthful, honest; both 
had wives and beautiful children whom they 
loved; both appeared to be gentlemen; but one 
thing will tell you what they are, try it ! Send 
the flag up on the staff, and let the red, white 
and blue stream in the wind! " How beautiful 
it is! " So thinks and sa} T s one of the men, and 
how proud he is of the blue uniform he wears. 
The other turns his back upon the flag; he 
hates it; he is a traitor. And much as we may 



54 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

think of him otherwise, when we call to mind 
that he is a traitor, he is all wrong. 

So any of you children who do not give to 
God your hearts; that is, do not choose Him as 
the one who is to guide your lives, you are dis- 
obedient, you are traitors! It takes but a very 
little thing to make a very great difference in 
your lives. A freezing boy will freeze just as 
surely just outside the door, if he does not get 
across the threshold, as he would out on the 
prairie. A drowning child will drown just as 
surely within a foot of the shore, if he cannot 
reach land, as if he were in the middle of the 
river. 

We all of us, then, must be very careful not 
to be satisfied with almost, and should rest only 
when we know what it is to be altogether a 
Christian. 

Remember that you can only be altogether a 
Christian when you have made up your mind 
that you will trust in Jesus Christ as your pre- 
cious Savior; a little step, but it decides the 
question whether you are all right or all wrong. 



THE RIGHT TIME. 



"In due time."— I. Tim., ii, 6. 

There is an old saying that there is a place 
for everything, and everything should be in its 
place. And there ought to be a saying that there 
is a time for everything, and everything should 
be in its time. And any one who reads the 
Bible carefully, can learn that God does all 
that He does in just the best time. He makes 
the sun to rise at the fixed minute, and the 
moon is never a second behind time; so that 
there is no danger of collision in the heavens 
among the stars, as there is on earth upon a 
railway when trains get out of time. 

Now, if God has a due time for everything, 
you must remember, first, that you can't make 
up lost time. Once in a while the train comes 
into Davenport an hour or two late, but that does 
not prevent any one getting on board to go to 
Chicago or Boston, because we know the engine 
can be made to run fast enough to make up 



56 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

lost time. But that is not the case with us. 
Every hour of the future has put into it all that 
any of us can do; and if any boy or girl to-day 
is not serving the Lord, there will never come a 
time when he can make it up. All that any of 
you children leave undone to-day must be left 
undone forever. For I notice, in the second 
place, a few things that must be done at the 
right time or not at all. 

When your father or mother take you East, 
they usually try to arrange the time of their 
going in such a way that you should see the 
points of interest along the line. If you go by the 
Michigan Central, to see Niagara Falls; by the 
Pennsylvania Central, to go over the mountains 
by daylight ; or by the Erie, to be up over the Sus- 
quehanna division, as it is called. Now, if the 
railroad folks are careless, and let the time go 
by, you are all disappointed, and lose very much 
of the profit of your journey. Just so along the 
line of your life, there are points that you can- 
not wisely pass. Now, it is very easy for you 
to learn ; commit to memory, as some call it; 
and there are hundreds of verses in the Bible 
that are most precious, and some time you would 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 57 

give a very great deal if you could have them 
in your mind. You will then have passed the 
time when you can commit to memory and keep 
what you learn. In the same way, when you 
are young is the time to form good, strong hab- 
its. Habits are like great bundles of sticks 
which a man glues together, one each day, for a 
long time. What a difference there is between 
that and an equal number of sticks thrown 
together at one time in a hurry, which is all 
an old person can do if late in life he begins to 
serve God. 

You all know, children, that there is a right 
time for baby's first teeth to come; and there is 
a right time for little children to lose their teeth ; 
and then a right time to go and have the dentist 
see that they are all right. And as men can't 
have baby teeth, and if you let your teeth go 
too long no dentist can save them, so with your 
minds. There is the best time for you to learn 
God's truth, and the best time for you to do as 
He wants you to do; and when that time is 
gone by, you can do little or nothing of your 
duty. But there is one thing more to be 
remembered: that now is God's due time for 



58 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

you to do your duty. You can't change the 
past. If you scolded your little sister yester- 
day, you can't now make it out that you did not 
do it. The hard words were spoken, the little 
girl felt hurt, and although you may be very 
sorry and be very kind to-da}', it still is true 
that you were cruel yesterday. 

You cannot count on the future. There are 
perhaps seventy-five young folks who are listen- 
ing to what I am saying , and I suppose every 
one of them who has ever had any thought about 
it expects to do something worth while when he 
grows up. Is there any one here under eighteen 
years who can say, I know I shall be twenty- 
one? No, there is no one in this house who 
can say, "I know that I shall be alive next 
Sunday. " JVotu is the only time with us, and 
that is God's due time, or rather it is the time 
for us to do our duty. 

It is each child's duty, as well as each grown 
person's, to love God, and that we ought to do 
this very moment. 

You would think her a naughty girl, who 
should say, "I am going to be unkind to mother 
to-day and to morrow, but Tuesday I mean to 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 59 

be kind. " You would say, Now is the time for 
a good girl to treat her mother kindly. 

You know that Jesus wants each one of you 
to be His friend. He has died so that you might 
love Him. And every day that you do not love 
Him, you are treating Him as if you did not 
care if He did die for you. Now is God's time. 
It is the due time for you, and me, and all, to 
give Him all we have, and are, and hope to be. 



CHRIST'S AMBASSADORS. 



" We are ambassadors for Christ." — II. Cor., v, 21. 

After the war closed fifteen years ago, there 
was a company of men who had been fighting 
against the United States, who made up their 
minds that they would not live in the United 
States, but would go off to South America 
where they would not see the flag that they 
hated, or have to obey the President whom they 
could not endure. 

They went, but very soon they found that 
they could not get along without the govern- 
ment of the United States, as well as the United 
States could get along without them. 

Now if one of these men had felt as though 
he could not stay away any longer, and had 
gone to Washington and seen the President and 
told him that he had done wrong, and wanted to 
become a good citizen of the United States, and 
the President had said to him, my friend you are 
forgiven, I am glad to tell you that such arrange- 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 61 

ments have been made, that I can, without in- 
juring any one, take you back as a citizen of the 
United States, and you can be treated just as 
well as if you had never been at war with us. 
You know that such a man would have been 
very thankful, and would have told the Presi- 
dent so; but you would expect that he would 
have done more than that, and the first thing 
that he would have asked, would be, "Mr. Presi- 
dent, can I not go back to South America and 
tell my friends there, that you will forgive them, 
and that they can have the same treatment, that 
I have had?" " Certainly," the President 
would have said, " you can go, and I would be 
most happy to have you go." That man would 
then be an ambassador for the President, to 
the men who needed the help which the Presi- 
dent alone could give. 

Before the man should have started, he would 
have received some papers that would have told 
just how the men in South America should do in 
order to become citizens of the United States, and 
he would have to go by those papers in every- 
thing. And whatever he said would then have 



62 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

been just the same as if the President had said 
it himself. 

Now, every true minister is an ambassador, 
and I am an ambassador to you. I was a rebel 
against God's government. I did not do at all 
as He wanted me to. I did not want Him to 
rule over me. About twenty-five years ago I 
made up my mind that I would go to my right- 
ful king, Jesus, and tell Him that I would try 
and be a faithful citizen of His government. I 
found the King very glad to welcome me back, 
and that he had made all the arrangements by 
which I could be taken back; that the King had 
suffered and died on the cross so that I might 
be forgiven, and that He had come to life three 
days after He had been crucified, so that I might 
have Him to love and serve. Some years after 
I had learned these things, as I grew older, so 
that I could tell better what I knew, I made up 
my mind that I would ask Jesus if He did not 
want me to go and tell others that they could 
be forgiven. He told me He did ; and for more 
than thirteen years I have been trying to per. 
suade those whom I have been acquainted with 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 63 

that they should ask for forgiveness, and become 
citizens of the kingdom. Many have believed 
what I have said, and have had their sins par- 
doned, and are now happy in the service of the 
King. Most of you children are among this 
number, but I am afraid that some of you still are 
serving yourselves instead of serving Him. So 
to-day I stand here as an ambassador from Jesus, 
and in His place I ask you to make up your 
mind to love and serve God. 

My King has given me his instructions in this 
book, and it is written in such a way that I can 
understand what to do, and can also make you 
understand it. 

There are three principal things that you 
must do if you would be loyal to Him, that is, 
would be Christians. 

i. You must take Jesus Christ as your Savior, 
must ask God to forgive you because Jesus has 
died for you. 

2. You must make up your mind to try and 
do as He wants you to. 

3. You must live not for yourself but for 
others. 



64 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

These three things done, and, as an ambassa- 
dor, I am bid tell you that you are forgiven, and 
by-and-by will go to live with God in heaven. 



THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL 



"The glorious gospel of the blessed God." 1 — I. Tim., i, 2. 

Children, your text to-day has seven words r 
and four of them are the four best words in the 
English language in the parts of speech to 
which they belong. Are there anywhere any 
two better nouns than God and gospel, or two 
better adjectives than glorious and blessed? 
The finest mornings of the year and the best 
news of our lives we call glorious. The high- 
est wish that any of us can have for any one is 
that they should be blessed. While the word 
God means the good or the best, and the word 
gospel, good news or the best news. 

And what is more, the man who wrote your 
text knew what the words mean and used them 
carefully. Children do not always use words 
according to their meaning. I have heard a 
little boy say that his finger pained him awfully 
when it was only a slight bruise that made the 
ache. Some girls are all the time calling every- 



66 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

thing splendid, lovely, horrid, dreadful, as the 
case may be, hardly thinking what they are 
saying. 

But Paul used his words in a very choice 
manner, and when he put the seven words of 
your text together and found use for four such 
choice ones, he must have had in mind some- 
thing which we all ought to know about. And 
I presume you all know what the glorious good 
news of our blessed God is. It is that God has 
made a way by which we can one and all ob- 
tain eternal life. 

The little boy in Africa, when he woke up 
this morning and saw his father getting ready 
to kill a poor captive, should he ask his father 
why he did such a cruel thing, would learn that 
his father was afraid of a hideous idol in the 
temple, and to keep on the right side of it, he 
was going to kill the captive. All the father can 
think of is his good luck or bad luck in a fight 
or on the hunt, and his little son has never heard 
that there is a place beyond this world where 
all who dwell in it are living true, kind, wise 
and good. 

Now, you children would have been just as 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 67 

ignorant and life would have been as dark to 
you as to this little black boy in Africa, had not 
some one heard the glorious good news which 
our blessed God told so long ago to men. And 
there are three things which you ought to do 
with this text: 

First, you ought to believe it. Good news is 
no better than bad if you don't believe it. If 
you are living in a very inconvenient house, 
and father should come home at night and say 
that next week you all were to move into a 
large house on the bluff, and you yourself were 
to have a nice room with new furniture and a 
carpet just like the one your little playmate 
has, if you did not believe a word that your 
father said, you would only be the worse off 
because he had said what he did. But children 
generally believe what is told them by their 
friends, and most of you believe God is your 
friend. So I will not say anything further 
about believing, but will say, in the second 
place, that you should act as though you be- 
lieved the good news. 

Suppose mother had told you yesterday that 
to-morrow morning you were to take the train 



68 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GlRLS. 

which goes to Chicago, and you were going to 
visit your grandfather, where you had such a 
nice time last summer, how early you would go 
to bed to-night, so that you might wake up in 
time for the train. Do you suppose a single 
one of you could sleep so soundly that your 
mother would have to call you a half dozen 
times ? 

Now, God has better news than this. He is 
telling you all, that if you will try to love and 
please Jesus Christ, He will take you, when you 
are ready to go, to be with Him in Heaven. 
You believe that, and it ought to make you 
very anxious to be good, so that you may go. 
But I see some boys in our Sunday School who 
are more anxious to do what their playmates 
ask them to than what God desires of them, 
more afraid of losing a chance to have sport 
than of doing wrong, and hence they, by their 
actions, are saying to God, by and by, when I 
get ready, I will listen to your good news; I 
want to attend to myself now. If you believed 
that you could make good wages by becoming 
a teacher, or a lawyer, or an artist, I think you 
would all try hard for it, and God thinks that 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 69 

you ought all to try your very best to get all 
the good there is in His good news. 

One thing more. I have noticed that all 
kind-hearted people, when they hear any good 
news, love to tell it. If your teacher should 
tell you that you were to have a holiday next 
week, how many would you tell before you got 
home? Just as many as you would meet, and 
you would run to meet all you could. It 
you had a baby brother or sister come to your 
house, don't you think you would tell your 
playmates? If you were promoted in school, 
wouldn't father and mother soon hear of it? 
So if you believe the good news you will want 
all others to believe it, and you will tell it; and 
the best way to tell it is by living kind, pure, 
true, loving lives, so that all shall know that the 
glorious gospel of the blessed God is just as 
good for boys and girls as it was for the Apostle 
Paul. 



THE SINGING ARMY. 



"And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set 
ambushments against the children of Animon, Moab, and Mount 
Seir, which were come against Judah, and they were smitten." — 
II/Chron. XX, 22. 

This, the last verse of your Sunday School 
lesson to-day, is an account of a wonderful vic- 
tory made by a singing army. All that they 
did was to sing praises to God and He helped 
them, by making their enemies fight among 
themselves instead of fighting against God's 
people. 

Now to-day there is a singing army in the 
world, it is composed of the Sunday School 
children who in almost every land love to sing 
the sweet and stirring music of the cross, and I, 
for one, believe that your singing is one of the 
most important means which God is using to 
win victories for his church. 

Singing has won many victories : In the time 

70 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 71 

of the old Puritans in England, the army of 
Cromwell used to sing sacred hymns, as they 
feared God, kept their powder dry, and brought 
terror to their foes. 

In the war between the united powers and 
Russia, some years ago, it is said that the French 
army, after having made a valiant attack upon 
a Russian fort, was about ready to retreat and 
lose the day. Napoleon was telegraphed to; 
he telegraphed back immediately, " Let them 
sing the Marseillaise," the national hymn of 
France. They began to sing, courage returned, 
valor was revived, and the singing army took 
the fort. 

Now I have called you a part of the Lord's 
singing army. You would make about two 
companies, counting in some of the older ones r 
who like to sing your songs as well as you. You 
have chosen me as your captain, and although I 
can't sin^ as well as many in the ranks, if I am 
captain, I must give you your orders. And I do 
not think I could find anything better than the 
words that Jehoshaphat, the king of the singing 
army of the text gave. You will recall them, 
the words of your golden text to-day: ''Believe 



72 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established ; 
believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.'" You 
must then believe what you sing. Once in a 
while at negro shows, I am told, and in saloons, 
and from hand organs, there come the songs 
which the children's army is singing: "Hold the 
fort," "I need thee every hour," u Sweet bye 
and bye," etc., but I never heard that these 
songs won any victories over sin when used in 
such a way. But I have known some of Satan's 
army defeated, when those who believed what 
they sung, sang these precious hymns. There 
is a very wicked man in this town, mean in his 
life and hating God, who cannot keep back the 
tears when the children sing. Your songs can 
reach him, although he would not be moved by 
the best sermons or strongest books. So that 
you will want, if you belong to the great singing 
army, to believe as you sing. 

But more than that, in the second place, you 
must sing as though you believed. What if 
Jehoshaphat's army, when he sent them out, had 
gone on to the field of battle singing a doleful 
song, or had sung one of the grand hymns, as 
though they were afraid lest their enemies 



SERMONS FOR BOHS AND GIRLS. 73 

•should hear them, do you think they would 
have won the victory? The enemy would have 
said the Lord's army was frightened and would 
have chased them from the field. But when 
they heard the Lord's army singing songs of 
victory, they fell into a panic and began to kill 
each other until they were all destroyed. And 
to-day there is nothing that makes the enemies 
of Jesus more troubled than to hear the childrens' 
army singing as though they believed what they 
sing. 

And then, a third thing, I, as your captain, 
would tell you, and that is, God will bless those 
who sing. Don't you remember how Paul and 
Silas sang praises in the jail, so that all the pris- 
oners heard them, and then all at once, in the 
middle of the night, God made an earthquake 
which shook the jail so much that the feet of the 
prisoners were loosed from the stocks ? It may 
not be that your songs will do such things as 
that, but if your lives are sweet and pure and 
strong, as they cannot help being if you believe 
God, your songs will shake many stout hearts. 
God has made you to sing; he has helped good 
men to write words and music that you can 



74 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

sing; you belong to the army which He is lead- 
ing; the enemy are come out against us; they 
want to take you prisoners and teach you to 
hate God and the right; but you are not going 
to be taken; you are going to "hold the fort. n 
You see the signal of your king. Your hands 
are not strong enough to do hard fighting, but 
you can sing. Sing, then, all of you. Believe 
what you sing, sing as though you believed, and 
God will bless your songs. 



THE PRAYING KING. 



II. Chron., xxxii, 20-21. 

A few Sundays ago, you remember, we had a 
sermon upon the singing army and its victories ; 
to-day we have an account of a victory just as 
great because of a praying king. 

Two years before the time of our text, the 
king, instead of praying to the Lord to help 
him fight against his enemy, paid a large 
amount of gold to save his city and kingdom. 
He thought that he was doing right, perhaps, and 
all the people were very much pleased at his 
course, and had a great celebration over it. 

But there were a few very godly -men who 
were very much grieved at what the king had 
done, and told him so. And Hezekiah was such 
a good man, and wanted so much to do right, that 
he made up his mind to do all he could to pro- 
tect his kingdom, and to trust in the Lord to 
help him. 

He did not have long to wait. The king of 
Nineveh, the same king who had been bought 

75 



76 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

off only two years before, started out to make 
war upon the rich country of Egypt, and made 
up his mind that he would make clean work as 
he went along. Egypt was about as far from 
Jerusalem as St. Louis is from here, and Nine- 
veh, where the king Sennacherib lived, was 
about as far from Jerusalem as Chicago is from 
us. Of course there were no railroads, and the 
country was very hilly, and they marched quite 
slowly. There was a very strongly fortified 
town at Lacish, about as far from Jerusalem as 
Muscatine is from Davenport, a little farther, 
perhaps. And the first thing that Sennacherib 
did was to take that place and burn it, and skin 
the people alive. All the people in the country, 
when they heard what was going on at Lacish, 
left their homes and went into the city of king 
Hezekiah, Jerusalem, for it was built on a high 
hill and had strong walls all around it, which 
Hezekiah had been making stronger for some 
months, just as the people would come in from 
Durant and Dewitt and all the farms, to our 
city, if they thought it was safe and there was 
such a great army at Muscatine. 

Then, too, Hezekiah had taken pains to turn 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 77 

away from the city some brooks, so that if the 
army came to take it they would have no water 
for their horses or themselves. So Sennacherib 
only sent a few regiments to Jerusalem, with 
some high ranked officers, and they came to a 
place on the north side of the city and read a 
letter from Sennacherib, in which he told the 
people to give up at once; that it was foolish to 
trust in Hezekiah or in God; that they would 
have to be destroyed like a great many other 
people if they did not yield at once. 

There were a great many people on the wall 
and on the roofs of the houses, and so still were 
they all that they could hear the letter when it 
was read by the generals before it was sent to 
the king. The messengers who received the 
letter were frightened almost to death, and they 
and the king tore their coats off of themselves 
and threw dust and ashes on their heads. 

But the king knew that he could do no more, 
and did not dare to expect that the King of 
Egypt would come in time to save him, so he 
went into the great church, unfolded the letter 
before God, and prayed with all his might to 
the Lord. His prayer was heard, and the next 



78 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

morning news came that a large part of Sennach- 
erib's army had died in the night, and the few that 
were left had gone back home. This was a 
great deliverance, just as the Russians were 
saved from Napoleon and the French by a bitter 
cold night that froze 20,000 horses, and Protest- 
ant England was saved from Roman Catholic 
Spain by a storm at sea which sunk seventy 
Spanish ships; and Washington was saved from 
rebel gunboats by the monitor that sailed 
into the James River. And I have no doubt 
that at these later escapes prayer was offered as 
in the time of Hezekiah, when the army was 
destroyed, as you have all read in your school 
books, 

"The Assyrians came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ; 
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, 
The host with their banners at sunset were seen ; 
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, 
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown ; 
And the might of the gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord." 

And what are we to learn from this story of 
to-day? 

1st. Don't try to make bad people your friends 
by paying them. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 79 

2d. When you know that the wicked are try- 
ing with all their might to make you like them- 
selves, pray to the Lord. 

3d. Do all you can to make yourselves strong, 
and leave all the rest with Him who has prom- 
ised to protect those who put their trust in 
Him. 



HOW TO KEEP SUNDAY. 



"The Sabbath was made for man." — Mark ii. 27. 

When Jesus used the word man in the text, 
He did not mean simply people who had beards 
and mustaches, deep voices, and wrinkles on their 
faces, He meant that the Sabbath was made for 
mankind, and hence, it was made for boys and 
girls, for surely they are human beings, and the 
Sabbath is one of the very best things that was 
ever made for you. The Lord always makes 
best things, and especially when he is making 
anything for those whom He loves, and He cer- 
tainly loves the boys and girls. 

Now, if God has made such a day for you, you 
certainly want to know how to make the most 
of it. And the first thing you will want to do 
is to expect to enjoy the Sabbath. I know a 
little girl not more than three years old, who 
beginSiWhen it is Monday, to ask "when will Sun- 
day come?" It is always nice to enjoy a good 
thing before-hand; if mother should tell you 
that you were going to have a new pair of boots, 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 81 

or a neV dress next week you would have a 
great deal of pleasure in thinking of it before- 
hand. And this would lead you to do another 
thing to get ready for Sunday to come. In your 
Sabbath School lesson to-day you learned how 
Nehemiah did, he shut the gates of the city Sat- 
urday night at sun-down. I can remember when 
Sunday used to commence at that time in our 
house, and we would as soon have thought of 
going without our meals on Saturday as to have 
failed of having a good, thorough bath on Sat- 
urday evening, to be all ready for Sunday. In 
the summer we would take it in the river with 
a good swim (the best bath of all the week), 
and in the winter the best way we could. Sun- 
day is the day when we are to see more of God 
than any other day, and, although He cares more 
for clean hearts than anything else, He likes to 
have clean hands and faces to go with the clean 
hearts, and in fact to have us thoroughly clean. 
Then, too, another thing you will not forget to 
do, ask God to help you enjoy Sunday. This 
done, your sled or hoop and other playthings put 
one side, you can go to sleep and sleep as only 
children can, knowing nothing more until Sun- 



82 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

day has come. Now, how will you use the day. 
You can begin it with thanking God for it; it 
tells you that Jeusus rose on that day, and that if 
you love him you are to rise by and by and go 
to live with him. The birds in bird-singing 
time will have sung their thanks before you get 
up ; by and by breakfast is ready, and boys and 
girls always enjoy Sunday morning breakfast, 
because it will be a little the best breakfast o{ 
the week. After breakfast and morning pray- 
ers, when father won't have to be in such a 
hurry to go to the store as he is some days, per- 
haps you can get him to tell you a good story 
that he has read out of the Bible or some other 
good book. Then you want to make sure that 
you have a good Sabbath School lesson, for boys 
and girls, like grown people, enjoy the most 
what the} T do well. Then, ready to go to church, 
you will be careful to be there in time, for it is 
a pity to be late when God has his people meet 
together. I told you last Sunday what you 
would do in church, and you all know, from go- 
ing to school so much, how to behave in Sunday 
School. By this time you will be hungry " as a 
bear, 1 ' you say, but I hope you won 1 t be cross 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 83 

and growl because you are hungry, for as soon 
as ever it can be, dinner will be ready, and a first- 
rate dinner it will be. When that is over, per- 
haps mother will want some- help, or there will 
be something to do for the horse or the chickens, 
so that you can stir around ; if it is pleasant you 
can stroll through the door yard, or if not, have 
a quiet walk about the house. After a little, 
you will want to stud} 7 your Sabbath School 
lesson, for none of you need to go to another 
Sunday School in the afternoon, it is a very poor 
plan for you to do it. Then when you have read 
your Bible and your paper, which is made so 
interesting and beautiful at great expense, it 
will be about time to ask mother whether she 
has not something laid by for you to eat. Per- 
haps she will have brought in, before you ask 
it, something she knows you like very much. 
When you have eaten this I would n't wonder 
if she would sit down an hour with you, and 
have the ver} 7 best time of all the week, for 
these mothers know how to make the boys and 
girls have the best time when they set out. 
She will have saved up some stories to tell you, 
and you can sing and pray together, and before 



84 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

you get through, all of you will have to put your 
arms around mother's neck and say, " you are 
the nicest mother there ever was." Before you 
know it, it will be night; you then can have a 
quiet frolic, and Sunday will be gone, the day 
of all the week the best, for the Sabbath was 
made for boys and girls. 



BEHAVIOR IN CHURCH. 



" And they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with 
their faces to the ground." — Neh., viii, 6. 

It was a great meeting of which your text 
gives part of the account. There were chil- 
dren present during the meeting, which lasted 
from sunrise until noon. One man read the 
books of Moses, the first five books of the Old 
Testament, and while he read all the people 
stood up. Several men explained what was 
read, and while they made their remarks they 
and the people sat down; but during prayer, 
the man who prayed lifted both his hands to- 
ward the sky, and the people kneeled down, 
bending forward their faces until they touched 
the ground. 

As you can see, their forms of worship were 
very different from ours, and we would think it 
quite strange could we see such a meeting. 

But what would those people think of us, 
were they to see the way that some of us wor- 
ship ? 



86 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

When the minister prays, some of the chil- 
dren put their hands to their eyes and try to 
pray with the minister, but there are some who 
spend the time looking around, and others, with 
their eyes shut, look as though they were pray- 
ing, but their minds are wandering around. It 
must be very displeasing to God to have such 
ill-behaved people in his church, and I hope that 
the children here on Sabbath morning will not 
only bow their heads in prayer, but pray with 
the minister; and I can tell you oneway to help 
you: it is to say amen to the prayers of the 
minister as he goes from one thing to another. 
I do that now when I hear prayer, not out loud, 
but to myself, and in this way I notice what the 
man who prays is praying for, and pray for the 
same myself. And I think that any of you 
who can understand what I am saying now, can 
follow in the prayer, for your pastor tries to use 
simple words and to pray for the things that 
we all need, and I wish that if any of you find 
that you can not understand what I pray for, 
that you would come and tell me, and then the 
next Sunday watch and see if you can not pray 
with me. And what do we mean when we 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 87 

say amen? I was quite a large boy, as 
much as thirteen years old, before I found out. 
I thought it meant stop, because it came always 
at the end of the prayer; and one time when a 
man came to meeting, where my father was 
preaching, and kept saying, amen, amen, I 
thought that he was telling father to stop, and 
was very much displeased, but when I went 
home and found out that amen meant "so be it," 
I felt ashamed because I had been displeased. 
So when I pray that God will help us to be kind 
and true, if you say quietly, amen, God hears, 
you say, "so may I be kind and true." And if 
you will noti ce, you will find that almost every 
Sunday I ask God for something for you, and 
as your fathers and mothers say amen for that, 
so can you say amen when I ask for something 
for them. And you will find that it will help 
you to bow your heads and close your eyes, and 
if you try to pray in this way, it will please 
God, who, I have no doubt, likes to have you 
act aright when in prayer, as much as your 
mother likes to have you take off your hat 
when you come into the parlor to speak to her; 
but it will not please God to have you bow your 



8'8 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

head and close your eyes and think of your 
marbles or sled or top, any more than it will 
please mother to have her boy take off his 
hat and then give her a scolding. 

But the minister reads the Bible as they did 
in the meeting of which your text speaks; and 
I am quite sure that the children, if they try, 
can understand what the minister reads ; and if 
you watch closely, you will see that often the 
minister reads a chapter which has something 
to say about what has happened during the 
week, now about the snow, another time about 
the cold, then about the rain or the heat, and 
he does it because in this way we can all learn 
what God has to say about the things that hap- 
pen all about us. Then another thing, almost 
always the second lesson from the Scriptures, 
has something from God about the sermon that 
is to follow. And in all the reading, I wish that 
you all could feel that it is God's book, and that 
to please Him you would try your best to hear 
and understand it, and if you have your Bibles 
with you, you could understand it better by look- 
ing over when your minister reads, and I will try 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 89 

to remember and give you time to rind the place 
if vou will bring Bibles to church. 

Another thing they had in that meeting, it 
was a kind of sermon, by which the people 
were helped to understand the Bible, and to do 
right. I am glad to know that many of the 
children have learned to listen to their sermon, 
and it does your minister good when he looks 
down from the pulpit and catches the eyes of 
children who are attending to the sermon, so 
that when they go home they can tell what they 
have heard. So }^ou see, children, there is a 
right way of acting in meeting, and your par- 
ents, your minister and all, are pleased with all 
of you who try to behave right in God's house. 



THE CONTRIBUTION BOX. 



"They made a chest to bring into the Lord the collection, and 
all the people rejoiced and brought in and cast into the chest. 
— II. Chron. xxiv, 8, 9, 10. 

Children, I have seen men and women who 
looked as though they had rather meet a bear 
in the woods than to see a contribution box. 
They were very different indeed, from the peo- 
ple of your text, who rejoiced because a collec- 
tion was going to be taken up. And as I want 
to have you all grow up glad to give, I want to 
talk to you to-day about contributions. 

i. It takes money to carry on the Lord's 
work. God, if He had chosen, could have had 
the masons, and carpenters, and goldsmiths 
get together and repair the temple, and bring 
not only their tools, but all the material that 
was needed, but He commonly uses the regular 
way of doing things, and hence, after he had 
had Joash repair the temple, He led him to 
make a great collection to hire the men to do 
the work. It takes meeting houses and min- 

90 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 91 

isters and missionaries now-a-days to carry on 
God's work. Meeting houses can't be built 
without money, ministers are not angels who 
can get along without food during Sunday, and 
then fly up to heaven after preaching and stay 
until Sunday comes again, but they have to eat 
and sleep comfortably, so they must have 
money. 

We do hear that the gospel is free, and I heard 
of a man who thanked the Lord for the free gos- 
pel, and said he had had religion for fifteen 
years and it had only cost him twenty-five cents. 
But I rather think his religion had not done him 
much good, for I would say, in the second place, 
that we prize what we give our money for. If 
you have worked hard on small wages and 
saved up enough to buy you a suit of clothes, 
you will think much more of them than if they 
were given you by father and mother. You 
will be much more careful of your doll or sled 
or skates, if you have learned how much they 
are worth by paying for them out of your own 
money. I used to notice at college, that the 
young men who had to earn their own way were 
generally better scholars than those whose fathers 



92 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

paid all the bills. And I have usually noticed 
that those people enjoyed being Christians the 
most who have paid the most for it. But there 
is a third thing to notice, and that is that they 
do not always pay the most who give the most 
money. Jesus sat one day where he could see 
the people bring their collections to the chest, 
like the one of your text, He watched them all. 
The handsomely dressed people who put in bags 
of gold, the poorer people, pieces of silver, but 
there was a poor widow who came up so quietly, 
nobody noticed her but Jesus, and slipped in one- 
fourth of a cent. But it was all that she had, and 
Jesus said she gave more than all the rest put 
together. And I can remember when I was a 
bo} 7 how a poor woman in Mass., who had no 
money at all, brought a bag of chestnuts to help 
give Bibles to poor children, and a man bought 
the bag of chestnuts and then gave them up to 
be sold again, and so it went from hand to hand, 
until, if I remember rightly, it had brought in 
nearly a thousand dollars forjihe cause which 
the good woman loved. At other times rich 
men have learned how much some poor ones 
give and they have been led to do much more 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 93 

than they otherwise would have done, so that if 
one gives all he can, it does not matter if it is 
very little. And this leads me to say a fourth 
thing, that like the people whom you read of in 
your text, you ought to rejoice when you have 
a chance to put money into the contribution. 
The most that you give will probably be in 
Sabbath School, to keep that going, and help the 
young man down in Fisk University whom you 
want to become a minister. Then the boys once a 
month go to the "wide awakes," and the girls to 
the "sunbeams," both of which are raising- 
money to send the Word of God to the children 
who have no christian homes, Sabbath Schools 
or churches. If you have anything left, there 
will be a chance once in two months in church 
to give to some good object. And then if you 
have anything more, why all the rest of the 
Sundays the boxes are passed around to give 
the people a chance to pay for the wood and gas 
that make our church light and warm. So you 
see if it makes you happy to see the contribution 
box, you have a great many times to be happy 
in during the year. While if you feel miserable 
every time the box goes around, you must be 



94 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

real unhappy in this church of ours, where we 
believe in paying all we can and think that giving 
is a part of true religion, when one has anything 
to give. 

And more than all this, if you give all that, 
you give because you think it will please Jesus, 
and to help those who need help, you can feel 
that every cent, nickel, clime, or larger money 
is safely put into the bank of heaven, and when 
you go there will be the treasure waiting for 
you. 



THE NEW YEAR'S GREETING. 



Here I am! My father, who died last Tues- 
day at midnight, had, I am told, a little plain 
talk with you a week ago to-day, and now I 
want to talk with you, for, although I am only 
a little over four days old, I have seen enough 
of the world that I have come into, to have 
pretty clear ideas concerning some things that 
will interest you all. Men call me 1879, and 
say that no one was ever called by that name 
before, and that my parents and grandparents 
have done so much while they lived, that a great 
deal will be expected of me. It seems pretty 
hard to put such a great load on my young 
shoulders, and yet I am going to do my best, 
and I have come to you boys and girls on this, 
the first Sunday morning that I have seen, to 
ask if I cannot get your help for the year, for I 
want 1879 to be the very best year the world 
has ever seen. 

95 



96 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

Father told you that he treated you well 
while he had charge of you, and promised that 
I would do the best I could for you. I shall do 
it, but what that will be I cannot tell, for I do 
not know what Death, Disease, and Accident 
may be getting ready to do. One thing I 
know, that I can't live but a year; and I had 
rather live a year and do some good each one 
of its three hundred and sixty-five days, than 
to live three hundred and sixty-five years and 
be of no use to any body. And as to Disease 
and Accident, they cannot take away your 
choicest treasure, a pure, loving soul. 

All I want is, that as long as we go on to- 
gether that you should help me. I have two 
books which I write in every day. There is not 
much written in them yet. One I write with 
black ink, one with golden; every time I write 
with black ink it sends a pain through my 
heart; every time I use the golden ink I can 
hardly keep from singing. 

The book that has to be written with the 
black ink, grows to be very ugly. Why, the 
one my father carried is perfectly horrible to 
look upon. The one that has the golden letters 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 97 

shines more and more beautifully as its pages 
become full, and if I can only fill it during the 
year, it will come to be at last like one nugget 
of gold, such as I shall want to take with me 
when I go to stand beside all the other years — 
my ancestors who have gone. If the book 
filled with black is the largest how the world 
will despise and hate me when I am gone, and I 
shall be called mean, dreadful 1879. 

Now, you can help me. I have to write in 
these books just what I see. I have no right to 
change it in the least. With the black ink I 
write the bad things that are done, with the 
golden the good. Yesterday, and the day be- 
fore, and the two days before that, I put down 
something with golden ink, but more with black* 
Most of the black has been used in telling what 
wicked men and women have done; though 
some, I am sorry to say, is about boys and 
girls, and some of it about the very boys to 
whom I am talking. The golden pages that I 
have written are very beautiful, and many of 
your names are written there. Now, from my 
experience in the four days that I have lived I 
have come to the conclusion that if I want to 



98 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

keep my golden book the larger of the two, I 
must have the help of the children; and so I 
have come to you to-day, and want very much 
to have you make up your minds that you will 
live in such a way all the time that we are to- 
gether, that your name will be often found in 
the golden record, not in the record of black. 

And to help you do it, I will make each of 
you three presents this morning. One is a 
beautiful roll, on which is written, " Love God 
with all your hearts, and all others treat as you 
would have them treat you." The other is a 
.compass. Father called it a conscience, and if 
you are careful with it, it will always point you 
to the roll, that is to guide you in the way. 
The third is a cross. It is the most precious of 
all; for if you use it as you should, it will make 
you understand the roll, and keep the compass 
right. 

You will remember that my whole name is 
1879, A. D. The A. D. is the best part of it, 
for it brings to mind that precious One who 
died on the cross; and, as I should want to die 
to-day, if there were not an A. D. to my name, 
so I know that the only way in which you can 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 99 

make my life worth anything, by rilling the 
golden book, is to hold fast to the roll, the com- 
pass, and the cross. 



SPRING SERMON FOR .878. 



"He changeth the times and the seasons." — Dan. ii, 21. 

Every year that I have preached, I think, I 
have had a sermon upon Spring. But never be- 
fore have I preached such a sermon in March. 
Last year I talked to you of the season "which 
unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil," 
quite late in April, and wondered when I had 
the sermon written, whether Sunday would 
be Spring-like enough to preach it in. But this 
year Spring has been with us weeks already; 
in fact, has not been far away during all the 
Winter months. 

This Spring, therefore, being peculiar, has pe- 
culiar lessons to teach us. 

First, we learn how great variety there is in 
God's way of doing things. Spring sometimes 
gets away behind-hand. The almanac tells us 
to look for it in March, and there will perhaps 
be more snow in that month than in all the Win- 
ter that had passed. April is cold, chilly, raw. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 101 

May morning tingles the fingers out after flow- 
ers. But about the second week in May, Spring 
begins to come; and how fast it comes: like a 
railroad train trying to make up lost time. On 
other years — like this Spring — it is ahead of its 
usual time of coming. It reminds us of some 
friends who send word that they are coming 
next week, and really come to-day. We are 
not quite ready to see them. The house is not in 
order; but we all like Spring so well that we 
are always very glad to see it come, even ahead 
of time, if it will only look out and not come so 
early as to catch cold and die on our hands. 

Then, too, some Spring months are dry, 
others are wet. So that it is true that God has a 
great many ways of doing the same thing; and 
how glad I am that it is so; for this would 
be a dull world, did the thermometer stand just 
alike year after year, on each day as it goes by, 
or did we all look just alike, or did we all think 
just alike. God is wise and great, because He 
has so many ways of doing the same thing. 

The second thought taught by this lesson, is 
that we cannot tell before-hand what is going to 
happen. Men had thought that they were getting 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

very wise ; and on the first of the month were 
able to tell what the weather was to be all the 
weeks through it. But instead of the snow, ice 
and frost that they promised on a certain day, 
when the time came, we had all our windows open, 
men were working in the garden, and the boys 
were trying to find a shady place to play mar- 
bles in. They told us that the wind would be 
north and cold; and the north winds were warm. 
We can all learn this year that men know very 
little about the future, and must be much wiser 
than they are now, before they can tell before- 
hand what is going to happen; and hence it is not 
wise to trust too much in men, especially when 
they are telling what God is going to do, and 
God has not told them before-hand. A third 
lesson to learn is, God is kind. Three months 
ago there were thousands of poor families, who 
wondered how they could keep warm through 
the winter. It had been hard times, and the 
coal heap was small, and such folks dread 
March more than any other month. But every 
morning this month God has made a fire for 
them. The sun and the south, and unusually 
warm north winds are better than a load of 
coal at every poor man's door. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 103 

But perhaps you have heard people say, 
" Oh, yes! it is warm to-day, but we have got to 
pay for it bye 'and bye, when the frost will come 
and kill the silly buds and blossoms that came 
out because they thought it was spring." 

Some of the papers have said this was like 
the spring of the year which was so bad that men 
called it " eighteen hundred and starve-to- 
death." But, children, you and I will try to 
trust God, and not be like those, who, because 
every thing is so nice to-day that they can't find 
any fault with it, grumble about what may pos- 
sibly happen next week or next month. God is 
kind, and even if He should have to send a frost 
and kill the fruit, it won't be half as bad as we 
deserve to have happen. And then if the 
season should be pleasant all the way through, 
won't it do us good to tell the old croakers 
that they ought to be ashamed of themselves. 

But I must save the other lessons of the seasons 
until next spring comes, and meanwhile we will 
remember how wise and good God is, and trust 
in Him instead of trusting in men who do not 
believe God. 



SPRING SERMON, 1879. 



" The flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the singing of 
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." — 
Solomon's Songs ii., 12. 

I had been thinking that this year I would 
let you go without a spring sermon; but when I 
was riding on the top of a freight car through 
the country on Friday, and thinking of you, I 
made up my mind that I must tell you of the 
beautiful things I saw and heard. Your text 
tells a part of what I saw and heard. It says 
the flowers appear upon the earth ; and as I rode 
along there seemed to be for miles beside the 
track a perfect flower garden of bright-colored 
flowers, and those of plainer colors, and the air 
was full of their fragrance. 

Once in a while we would go rushing past a 
little grove of wild crab-apple, and the air was 
loaded with delightful perfume. 

Toward evening the rest of the verse came 

true. The birds, that had been hiding away 

from the hot sun, came out and began their 

101 



105 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

evening hymns; the meadow-lark, singing to 
his mate; the robin, with his complaining note; 
the thrush, as merry as the wind, and the turtle 
dove, with its thoughtful eyes, almost too beau- 
tiful to sing. 

But I saw and heard more than the man in 
the text ; for I do not think even King Solomon 
ever put his eyes upon a more pleasing land- 
scape than the one which passed before me like 
a panorama for miles and miles. The sky was 
cloudless, and as the sun toward night shone 
upon the fertile farms where the busy men were 
at work, and I could see the wheat springing 
out of the ground; and now and then a field of 
corn with its rows as straight as arrows; the 
large pasture filled with happy cattle, and the 
comfortable homes among the trees, I could 
not help exclaiming, over and over again, "How 
good God is to give us such a wonderful land ! 
and to make it each spring so beautiful." 

And then I came into town, and as I looked 
upon the trees that had put, forth their leaves so 
rapidly in the two days after the rain, and the 
leaves of such a green as the painters can never 
find, and the pansy beds full of their little 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 106 

faces looking up to the sky; Do you wonder 
that I made up my mind to talk to you this 
morning upon the spring days? And the first 
thing I would tell you to do is to keep your 
eyes and ears open. 

On the car that I was riding in were two per- 
sons who did not see a flower or field, and one 
of them did not hear a bird sing. The one 
who could not see was a blind girl, and as she 
sat perfectly still, and the noisy cars rattled on, 
I could not help pitying the poor child, who 
must lose all the beautiful sights that I could 
see. The other was a man about thirty years 
of age, who drew out of his pocket a pipe 
more than two feet long, painted red like the 
smoke-stack of a steamboat, and then stuffed it 
full of the worst smelling tobacco, and began 
to puff, until he fairly drove me out of the car. 
But it was a good thing for me, for I should 
never have seen half as much inside as I could 
from the top of the train. But the smoker 
never saw a flower or heard a bird. All he 
could do was to sit with his back to the window 
and smoke. And I thought of what use is it to 
make such beautiful spring days when there are 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 107 

so many who never have eyes or ears open to 
see the flowers or hear the birds? And I hope 
that all of you, with your bright eyes and good 
ears — and I do not know that there is a blind or 
deaf one among you — will make it a habit to 
notice all these things that the spring is so 
full of. 

But more than that, I hope you will not only 
see and hear, but will look and listen for God. 
When you were coming to church this morning, 
if your mind was not taken up too much with 
your new clothes, or in noticing what others 
wore, or in thinking of the many things which 
ought to be forgotten on Sundays, you would 
have learned of God all the way to church. 
What man or company of men could have 
made the trees hang so full of leaves in a few 
short spring days? Only a few weeks ago, and 
there was a bundle of sticks and twigs, and now 
the green leaves, all full of nicely drawn lines, 
and carefully made with scalloped edges, some 
of one shade, others a little different, make the 
walk to church like a walk through a garden. 

Then, too, the rain. We carried our pails of 
water to the thirsty flowers, and those ; who 



108 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

could, put the hose at work upon the lawn, but 
all the while the great fields, the wide prairies 
were crying for rain; the wheat was dying, the 
corn could not start to live, the grass was grow- 
ing thin. God heard His people pray; the rain 
came. Did you not hear the trees and the 
grass clap their hands and laugh? It seems to 
me I could hear them sing. And I think that 
all of us who looked carefully and listened the 
same said we could see and hear our dear 
Father at work, making a beautiful world for 
His children to dwell in. 



AN EASTER SERMON, 1878. 



" But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first 
fruits of them that slept. — I. Cor., xv, 20. 

This is Easter Sunday. The day which all 
kinds of Christians all the world around celebrate 
as the one upon which Jesus Christ rose from 
the dead. Every Lord's day is an Easter, 
because it tells the same story, but there is one 
Lord's day in the spring time of the year which 
is set apart from all the Sundays to tell the 
story more plainly. 

It is somewhat as if I should ask you whether 
you had no clothes to wear; you would not point 
to your every-day coat or dress, or bring me 
any of the common ones, but you would go to 
your trunk and closet and bring me your best 
suit and show it to me. 

So Easter is simply the best Easter Sunday, 
and although it does not always come in the 
same month or on the same day of the month, 
that Jesus rose from the dead, 1845 years ago, it 

109 



110 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

tells us none the less plainly every time that it 
comes, Christ is risen. 

But children like to look forward better than 
backward, and your text to-day is one that gives 
you a forward look, for it tells you because 
Christ rose on the first Easter Sunday, that by 
and by all of us who are Christ's will rise. It 
says that Christ was the first fruits. If you had 
planted a tree, and did not know exactly what 
it was, but this fall you should find on it one 
handsome, rosy-cheeked apple, next spring when 
it was full of blossoms, and in the summer when 
the little apples were forming, you would be 
looking forward to a tree full of handsome, rosy- 
cheeked apples. This is one meaning of first 
fruits that will help you to understand how Christ 
is our first fruits. He rose almost two thousand 
years ago, no one else has risen in the same way, 
but by and by, we all, if we love and are like 
Him, are going to rise. 

But before that we all must sleep, or as 
people now-a-days say, we must die. Christ was 
dead. His body was in the grave from late 
Friday afternoon until very early the next 
Sunday morning, and was just as surely dead as 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. Ill 

any of the bodies which you have seen in coffins. 
Some of you think it is a sad thing to die. Per- 
haps if the oak could think, it would feel badly 
to look all winter as though it was dead, or the 
grass, or the little flowers, but since Jesus died 
and rose again, it is not a sad thing to die. If 
the oak tree were never going to have any leaves 
when it has lost them in the fall, or the fields 
were never going to be green again, it would be 
sad to see them so dead and bare, but for many 
a day we have been watching the buds growing 
larger and larger on the trees, and the leaves 
are coming out too and the prairies are already 
covered with green grass, and if you look care- 
fully, you can find here and there a blossom in 
the same spot where there was a cluster of wild 
flowers last year. 

So we will all be glad that, because there is 
an Easter, it need never be said of any of us 
that we are dead, but that we are asleep. 

But before we go to sleep or die, we have a 
great deal about us and in us that is neither 
good or nice. This will not be the case when 
we come to rise from the dead. I can not tell 
you what we shall be then, but one thing I know, 



112 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

we shall be like Jesus. I do not mean that we 
shall look just like Him, and so all look alike, but 
we shall all be perfect and complete. 

When this time comes the best Easter of all 
will have come. 

In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, God's 
trumpet will sound and we shall be changed. 

Our bodies may be buried on the land or lie 
under the sea. Some of you as you grow up may 
go to preach in China, or Africa, or Japan, and 
lie down there, falling asleep in Jesus. Some 
of you may have your bodies in Oakdale, father, 
mother and all the children side by side. But 
it makes no difference where our bodies fall 
asleep, nor in what kind of a casket or coffin 
the}^ are placed, when the trumpet sounds on the 
last Easter the world is to see, we shall one and 
all stand in the numberless company as much more 
beautiful than we are now, as the apple blossom 
or the full grown peach is more beautiful than the 
little, plain looking buds we saw on the trees last 
January. 

And because this is the case we all should be 
very careful of the bodies which are to rise. 
Sometimes in a cold winter or a late spring the 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 113 

frost goes through all the orchards and kills all 
the buds, and then when spring comes and the 
grass and leaves begin to grow green there is 
no blossom, the trees have no such Easter as 
they have this year. 

So I have seen boys, girls, "men and women 
who have let sin ruin them, as frost does the 
buds, and when the great Easter shall come the 
Bible says they shall rise to shame and contempt. 

God wants you to be such boys and girls as 
will rise at last in the beauty of His Son, and on 
this beautiful Easter morning I hope that each 
one of you will let Jesus shape your lives so that 
when He calls }^ou may be like Him. 



EASTER SERMON i 



" But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first 
fruits of them that slept." — I. Cor., xv, 20. 

When an artist has spent time and care upon 
a painting and has it done, usually he is glad to 
find a frame in which to place it and thus dis- 
play its beauty. The frame, although costly, is 
worth nothing to such a man unless he uses it. 

In some such way I look upon keeping Easter. 
It is a very beautiful custom, but is worth noth- 
ing unless it serves to call our attention to the 
great truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, 
and that other truth, that because He rose we 
shall rise also. 

I want to talk to you about this resurrection, 
one of the most blessed truths in all the Bible. 

There are many men now-a-days, who say 
that it is foolish to believe that our bodies are 
raised from the dead. They say that the bodies 
are put into a coffin, buried in the ground, and 
before many months or years there is nothing 
more left of them; that they have all gone 

114 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 115 

back to earth, and that they cannot be raised. 
On the other hand, the Bible says they can and 
will be raised; and I believe the Bible; and I 
want to have you believe it too, and that you 
may, let me tell you a few things. 

You need not believe that at the last great 
day when the dead rise, that exactly the same 
body is to come out of the grave that is buried 
there. We are to be changed, and you all 
know that there can be very great changes in a 
person and he still be the same. A little boy 
was baptized in church to-day; did you see his 
wee fingers and hands, his fair cheeks and hair; 
now it would not be a strange thing if forty 
years from to-day there should be a tall man 
with a fine head, dark hair and beard, with a 
clear voice, and using his hands with graceful 
gestures, who should be preaching in this pulpit, 
and he could say to those who heard him, forty 
years ago to-day my father and mother brought 
me here to be baptized. He would speak the 
truth, although there was not one particle of 
the little baby's body in his own body. There 
is some way, God only knows what, by which 
the child's body, a part of which dies every day, 



116 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

is changed to a man or woman's body; so the 
spiritual body that we are to have in heaven is 
connected with the bodies we have here and 
that we lay in the grave. 

But the spiritual body is to be vastly more 
beautiful than the one we have now. A little 
child came to its mother one day, and told her 
to look out of the window and see the ugly 
worm or grub on the branch of a tree near by, 
and as she told her she shuddered, so very ugly 
did the creature look. The mother did as her 
daughter asked her, but she would not do as her 
little girl wished her to, kill it, and she bade her 
let the creature all alone. The little girl obeyed 
and went about her plays, and tried to forget 
the ugly, crawling thing that she had seen. 
Not many days after, the same little girl came 
running up-stairs crying, "mother! mother! do 
come down stairs, quick or it will be gone; there 
is the most beautiful creature I ever saw, near the 
window; it has wings of such a nice color, and 
it flew against the window to have me let it in — 
come and open the window and let me take the 
dear thing in my hand." The mother hurried 
down stairs as her little girl wished and gave 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 117 

her the beautiful butterfly, but as she did it she 
said, " that is the grub or worm that you wanted 
me to kill only a few days ago. The little girl 
was half a mind to let the beautiful insect drop 
when she heard this, and had she not known that 
her mother always told the truth, she would not 
have believed her; but in after years she would 
have found that when she got old enough to 
know what is true, that her mother was right. 
Now, I need not tell you that the spiritual body, 
which we are to have, is to be as much more 
beautiful than the one put into the coffin, as the 
butterfly is more beautiful than the grub. You 
and I have not gotten minds strong or clear 
enough to imagine how beautiful a body God 
can and will make for our souls out of the bodies 
which we now have, 

Some one asked Paul once, how all this that 
I have been talking about could be? He got 
almost out of patience with the man and said, 
Can't you believe this? It is as if you would 
not believe that there could be a spear of wheat 
grow when you had put a kernel in the ground, 
because you cannot tell how it grows; and yet 
you know that it does grow, and, although the 



118 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

kernel decays in the ground, what a beautiful, 
tall stalk grows up, and there are fifty round, 
hard grains of wheat in its tufted head. So, 
says Paul, at the last day God will, out of and 
in place of the weak, wear}^ bodies that we now 
have, give us beautiful bodies to live in heaven 
with Him forever and ever. 

There is only one thing that we need see to, 
and we shall have these beautiful heavenly 
bodies: We must be the friends of that Jesus 
who rose from the dead on the first Easter Sun- 
day, and because He rose all His friends are 
to rise on the last Easter, the day when God 
will take His loved ones home. 



A THANKSGIVING SERMON. 



"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord." — Ps. xcii. i. 

During this week we are to have a Thanks- 
giving Day all over the land. It is only sixteen 
years that we have had such a National Thanks- 
giving. Before that time each Governor of 
each State, and of only a part of the States at 
that, used to appoint such a day. 

The New England States think more of the 
day than any other. Massachusetts has had 
Thanksgiving for more than two hundred and 
fifty years. The first one that I ever heard of 
they had in a town called Plymouth, in Mass.; 
and there were Indians and white men who 
kept it together. The Indians brought some 
wild game, deer and the like, the white people 
furnished corn and beans for the dinner. 

The first Thanksgivings that I remember were 
about thirty years ago. We used to think 
about it and hear about it long before it came; 
if anybody wanted to teli the time when he 



119 



120 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

thought of doing anything, he would say it was 
so many weeks or days before or after Thanks- 
giving. The winter school always began " the 
Monday after Thanksgiving." So you see, it 
was a very great day in the year, and if you 
had been there you would have found that it 
made a deal of work also. The mother of the 
family used to begin to get her mince-meat 
chopped a week beforehand. She had a brick 
oven in the chimney, into which the boys would 
throw several arms full of pine wood, and when 
they were burned the coals were raked out, 
the oven swept, then ten or twelve pies were 
put in, the door was shut, and in a little while 
they were baked nicer than you can think. 
Then every body who could, would have a 
turkey, although it might be the only one that 
they would have in all the year; for turkeys are 
not as plenty in New England as on our 
prairies. 

It did seem as though Thanksgiving would 
never come. But at last it came, and the fam- 
ily sat down to breakfast. The father's blessing 
was a little longer than common, for it was an 
uncommon breakfast. It was all made up of 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 121 

pie, chicken pie, mince pie, apple, squash, cus- 
tard, and other kinds of pie; and the children 
could have all the kinds they wanted. 

At half-past ten came meeting. The sermon 
was always long, but the older people seemed to 
think it good; the singing was very loud and 
lively, and the prayers were full of thanks and 
went around the world. After awhile meeting 
would be over, and then came the great dinner 
of all the year, and the only trouble was that 
the children would find that they had eaten 
enough too soon. 

After dinner came plays in the neighborhood 
among the children ; when it was dark the family 
came together, and that evening, if on no other 
evening of the year, the father and mother would 
play with the children, blind-man's buff and other 
games. The day after came a candy-pull, and 
Thanksgiving was over. So you can see, boys 
and girls, we children were very glad to have 
Thanksgiving come around, and to hear on the 
Sunday before the minister read a long paper 
called the Proclamation, all of which that I 
can remember was the name of the Governor 



122 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

who signed it, and the last words, " God save 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 

Now what was the use of all this? I will tell 
you. 

i. It made us love God more. It was a 
good way to teach us to remember that God 
gives us all the good things which we have; we 
stopped to think of it and spoke of it to one 
another, and we found it a good thing to give 
thanks unto the Lord. 

2. It made us love our State; we always 
knew that we had a Governor when Thanks- 
giving came, and that he wanted all the people 
to be happy, and we felt more proud of Massa- 
chusetts than most boys now-a-days do of the 
State they live in. 

3. It made us love home more. It was the 
brightest day of all the year in our homes, and 
we were taught to make other homes happy by 
sending to them dainties that they could not 
buy. Oh ! how we did love the old home and 
all who lived in it ; and I want you to have just 
such a Thanksgiving next Thursday, so that 
you may love more your God, your State and 
your homes. 



A FOREFATHERS' SERMON. 



Ps. xxii, 4. 

Usually on the Sunday before Christmas, I 
preach to you boys and girls a Christmas ser- 
mon, not because I think Christ was born on the 
25th of Dec, but because nearly all the Chris- 
tians of the world have come to celebrate that 
day as Christmas. 

But there is another birth-day to celebrate as 
well as Christ's birth-day, this week, and that 
birth-day is to-day, the. birth-day of America, 
the day when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. 
The little ship called the May-Flower, with 102 
passengers on board had sailed across the stormy 
Atlantic. They came after sixty-four days on 
the ocean to a harbor on the 2 2d of Nov., that 
was Saturday. Sunday they kept, and Monday 
sent out a party of men to find what kind of a 
country they had come to. It took nearly a 
month to find the right place to land. It was 
very cold; some of the time the water froze on 
their clothes and made them like coats of iron; 

123 



124 



SERMOXS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 



the mast of the exploring boat was blown away. 
On a Friday the}' found Plymouth harbor; the 
next day they dried their clothes and repaired 
the breaks in their boat. Sunday they kept 
holy unto the Lord. Monday they sounded the 
harbor, went on shore, marched some ways in- 
land, found some corn- fields and some small run- 
ning brooks, and made up their minds that the)' 
had come to the land which they had sought. So 
they came to the ship again with the good news 
to the rest of the people, and they were all glad. 
This was 2 59 years ago. Now as you are all Con- 
gregational children, and the Congregational peo- 
ple are very proud of the little band of men and 
women and children who landed on Plymouth 
Rock. I wanted to have you celebrate together 
the birth-day of our land. 

Why do I call the landing of the Pilgrims the 
birth-day of America? It is because the men 
who came to our country at that time have 
done more than any others to make America 
what it is. As they were coming over the 
ocean, they met together in the cabin of the 
ship and chose a governor. This was the little 
acorn from which the great tree, our United 
States has sprung. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 125 

There are several reasons why I love to call 
these men to mind. One is because the most of 
the men were Christians, and had come to Amer- 
ica that they might serve Christ better than 
they could have served Him in the Old World. 
And I believe that Jesus will be glad to have us 
remember such men on the Sunday that we 
usually remember His birth-day. A second 
reason is because the men were brave. I like 
to see. any one who dares to do what is right 
whatever it costs. These men made up their 
minds that a certain thing was right, and there 
were no king's swords, no ocean's waves, no 
fierce storms that could turn them to the ri^ht 
hand or the left. 

A third reason is because they have done so 
much for us all. If there had been a different 
class of men come and started this country, we 
should not have had a land full of churches, free 
schools and the Bible. Most of you know what 
a land Mexico is; how much less they enjoy 
there than we do here; how the children grow 
up without knowing how to read and write, 
There are no Sunday-schools, there are very few 



126 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

Bibles, then they have few railroads or tele- 
graphs or any other of the wonderful things 
that the United States is full of, and we should 
probably have been in the same condition had 
our country fallen into such hands at first as 
Mexico did, instead of having been settled by 
our Pilgrim Fathers. Therefore, boys and 
girls, on this cold winter day, call to mind the 
little company of true, brave, Christian men, 
women and children who landed on Plymouth 
Rock; and as we sing Christmas hymns to our 
Lord, we will sing one hymn about them, and 
try to be true pilgrims ourselves, brave, honest, 
ready to suffer for Christ, our King and Savior. 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON, 



" The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise." — Matt, i, 18. 

For a Christmas sermon this year, I want to 
give you an account of the first Christmas. We 
all this week are to celebrate, the birth-day of 
Jesus, and hence it is well to know what hap- 
pened on the day that he was born. 

The mother of Jesus, on the day before 
Christmas, had come, with her husband, to a 
little town called Bethlehem, where you will 
remember long before Ruth had gleaned in the 
field, and where David had watched his flock of 
sheep. 

It was late when Joseph and Mary came to 
the little village, and when they went to the 
public house to find a place to stay all night it 
was filled; there was no room for them. What 
were they to do? Near the house, in the hill- 
side, was a cave, used as a stable for the horses 
and cattle. They went into this place for the 
night, and before morning the little baby, Jesus, 
came. 

127 



128 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

It is just as though some dark evening a 
man and woman should come to your house 
when every room was full, and therefore should 
go to the barn, and when you should go in the 
morning to see how they slept you should find 
there had a little baby come, and see the wee 
thing wrapped in a shawl, perhaps crying with 
the cold. 

How different from the way the little baby 
came to your pleasant home a little while ago, 
when the first you knew father said you had a 
little brother or sister, and when you crept 
softly in to see it you found a kind nurse holding 
the little treasure in her arms, and it was as 
warm as warm could be, with its nice soft 
clothes and clean blanket. 

But during that night while Jesus was born, 
about a mile from the public house, there were 
some men attending sheep. They kept awake 
for fear the wolves would come and carry away 
their lambs ; when all at once they heard a sound 
in the sky, and looking up, it seemed as light as 
day. An angel appeared before them. They 
were afraid, terribly frightened. But the angel 
said, "Fear not. It is good news I bring, joy- 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 129 

ful news for all the world, for in the little town 
near by the Savior is just born. You can see 
Him if you will, in the manger of the cave near 
by the inn, with the little blanket wrapped 
about Him." And then, quick as thought, the 
angel was surrounded by a host, and they sang 
with one voice, Glory 10 God in the highest, and 
on earth, peace, good will toward men. 

The angels then departed as quietly and as 
quickly as they had come, and the shepherds 
left their flocks to go to the village and see the 
new-born child. They did not have a long, and 
it was a beautiful walk along the beautiful ter- 
races that surrounded the town. They found 
the manger, the mother, and the child, and 
praised God for at last sending His only begotten 
Son into the world. 

Not long after, perhaps not that night, but as 
a part of the first Christmas, came some men 
Irom a far-off land, wise men they were called, 
and they had been long on the way, following 
a star that directed them to the same cave 
where Jesus was born. They stayed a little 
while, and leaving some costly presents for the 
little one, went back to their distant home. 



130 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

This is all that has been told us of the first 
Christmas, and it seems like a little thing beside 
the great celebration which is to be held this week 
all the world around. Just as the little lake 
seems small from which comes the grand river 
which flows past our city. And }^et it was the 
greatest Christmas the world ever saw, and if 
there had not been such a first Christmas there 
never would have been the happy hours of the 
coming week. 

And Tuesday, when you are as happy as 
ever you can be, there are two things which I 
hope you will remember. One all about the 
first Christmas, what a loving, kind thing it 
was to have Jesus born your Savior; the other, 
that like the wise men, yours will be the 
best Christmas if you can give Jesus some gifts. 
You can not find Him in a manger, nor give 
Him gold, frankincense and myrrh, but He has 
said that if you give any thing to those who 
need, because you love Him, that it is the same 
as giving something to Him. He it was who 
said, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me." 



TEMPERANCE. 



ceived thereby is not wise." — Prov. xx, i. 

In my journeys I came to a beautiful land 
filled with pleasant homes. The fields were 
covered with grain, the brooks ran merrily 
through it, and I said to myself, how happy are 
the people who dwell in such a land. 

I had not been long there before I learned 
that in the midst of the country was a strong 
castle in which lived a giant, cruel and wicked. 
He was very old, but he never was more strong 
than he is to-day, and although nearly every one 
wishes him dead, I cannot see why he may not 
live many years to come. 

He is very rich ; you could not count the 
money that he has, or number the houses that 
he owns. His castle is stronger than iron and 
stone, and from its towers can be seen all the 
vast possessions of the giant. 

One cannot be long in this country without 
hearing much of the awful deeds of the cruel 

131 



132 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

monster. He sends out year by year and 
takes for his own use the product of many of 
the richest fields. Men sow barley, and the 
giant takes it nearly all. He puts his hand also 
on the rye and corn, and takes some of the 
apples, and many grapes. He does indeed give 
money sometimes for all these things, but he 
manages to get it out of the people who dwell 
there, so that for every dollar he pays them he 
gets twenty from them. 

I could not imagine what the giant could do 
with all this corn and barley, and the grapes, 
until I learned that he had a way of so chang- 
ing them that they became the means which he 
used to destroy the people of the land, to get 
them to his castle and grounds, and devour 
them. One day while I was there, I looked 
into one of the dungeons of the castle. In it I 
saw a poor wretch. His eyes were blood-shot, 
his face was scarred, his clothes were ragged 
and fithy, his hands shook as though he had 
the palsy. He told me his story. 

I was born, said he, in a pleasant valley many 
miles from this castle. My father was proud of 
me, and my mother loved me, and being an 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 133 

only son I was to be their heir, and I could have 
had the best farm in all the region where we 
lived. All went well with us until I was about 
sixteen years old,when one day I came to spend a 
few hours on the ground where this castle stands. 
I knew there was a giant living here, but I 
thought there was little risk of meeting him, 
and although he is very cruel, his grounds are 
as beautiful as money can make them. I did 
not let father and mother know where I went, 
and I had such a happy time that I went again. 
At length nry parents found me out. My father 
commanded, my mother begged, that I should 
never go again upon the grounds. I despised 
the commands and tears, for I had come to think 
more of the good times on the giant's grounds 
than of home. It took money to make so many 
visits, and when I had spent all of my own, I 
began to spend that which belonged to father 
and mother. They became poor, the farm had 
to be sold, father died a pauper, mother had 
gone before with a broken heart. I had no 
power to keep out of the hands of the giant, 
and for years he has had me in this dungeon. 
He abuses me every day of my life. I wish I 



134 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

was dead. I dare not die; I cannot live; oh, 
what! what shall I do? And the poor man 
looked the picture of wretchedness and 
despair. After a few moments I asked 
him whether there were many prisoners in the 
castle. Yes, oh yes, it is full of them. There 
are ten thousand cells, and every cell has its vic- 
tim, and there is not a day in all the year when 
the giant does not find time to come around and 
do us all the harm he can; and when we die, if 
report is true, we are given over to a worse foe, 
who is to keep us forever in torment. 

It would make your heart sick to have me tell 
you of the woes of men shut up in this awful 
castle. Some of them are made insane; some 
become murderers; many become suicides; not 
a few are idiots. Don't stay here with me any 
longer, said he, but return to the beautiful land 
where I used to live, and tell the boys and 
girls never, never, to go for a day into any of 
the grounds of the giant, Strong Drink, for 
although they may think it joyous at first, it 
will not be long before too late they will find 
out, as alas, I have done, that "Wine is a 
mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever 
is deceived thereby is not wise." 



A HOME MISSIONARY SERMON. 



Matt, xxv, 40. 

Children, you sometimes think ^perhaps, that 
because your sermon is short and made up of 
easy words, that it cannot take your minister 
much time to get it ready. You are mistaken, 
for often your little sermon costs me more time 
and thought than the general sermon; for it 
is not easy always to find just the truth which 
you will be interested in or will help you. 

This week I kept putting off writing you a 
sermon until last night. I was going to preach 
on Home Missions to the church, and I had 
preached to you about that only three weeks 
ago. The Sunday-school lesson did not give 
me any subject for you. I thought of every 
thing, and at last sat down and read the " Home 
Missionary" for December. 

After I had read it all through, I let it fall 
into my lap, and sat looking into the fire, and 
had this dream with my eyes open. 

135 



136 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

I seemed to myself to be a missionary in west- 
ern Iowa. I was about thirty-eight years old; 
had two girls and two boys, the oldest ten years, 
and the youngest a baby. We lived in a little 
house of two rooms. The mother of the child- 
ren had poor health, for there was a great 
deal of ague in the place where we lived, and 
she had worked too hard taking care of the 
children and of the house, for I had to be away 
a great deal of the time, as I had to preach in 
live different places in four different counties, 
and had to ride more than a hundred miles a 
week to be at my preaching places, and as much 
more to see the sick and attend funerals and 
do the other visiting that the people needed. 
But on the day of which I am writing, I was at 
home. My wife needed medicine. I had not 
a cent in my pocket-book, and had not had for 
weeks. My people had no money, and all that 
they could do was to pay me in corn, pork and 
potatoes, just enough for the family. All the 
money that I had, was from the Home Missionary 
Society in New York, and they agreed to send 
me once in three months just enough money to 
get the few things which we must have to live. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIIILS. 137 

But it had been six months since I had had any- 
thing from New York, and I was ashamed to 
go down town because I could not pay the book- 
store keeper for Nellie's slate, and the shoe- 
maker for mending my boots, and the tailor for 
making over my coat, and worst of all, the 
druggist for the medicine. I had told them so 
many times that I would let them have the 
mone} T , and they had looked lately as though 
they did not believe me, and thought that I did 
not mean to pay them, and they cannot be 
blamed, for they do not know me, for I have 
not been preaching for them more than twelve 
months, and yet there is wife, twenty-five cents 
worth of medicine would, I think, cure her. 
" Come Charley, can't you run over to the post- 
office. I see the mail has come in. Perhaps 
there will be a little money from the Society." 
"Why, papa, I have been every day for a month, 
and it has not come. 1 ' " Well, go once more. 
If you go, the shoemaker and the druggist can't 
look cross at you, they hardly know you." The 
little boy went and came back without a letter, 
but he brought with him a copy of the Mission- 
ary Magazine for Dec, in which it was stated 



138 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

that the Missionary Society is $30,000 behind, 
and the people in the churches are so slow in 
sending the money for the missionaries, that no 
one can tell when the missionaries will be paid. 
That means me. Well, one thing I can do, I said 
here is a watch that mother gave me when she 
died. I can take that to the druggist and tell him 
to take it and let me have some medicine. It may 
be that he will keep it and let me buy it back 
again when my money comes from the Society, 
of course I shall have to pay him well for keep- 
ing it for me. 

So I went to the druggist, he said he would 
call the watch worth ten dollars, Mother paid 
fifty for it, and let me have the medicine. I 
owed him five dollars already. He will keep it 
three weeks, and then I can have it for the 
money; he is very kind. I only hope the money 
will come. Children, don't you think I felt glad 
when I stopped dreaming and said that I was 
your minister instead of being a missionary in 
such trouble. I did, but then I said to myself, 
that dream is the real life of many men, better 
men, abler men than I am, and I made up my 
mind that I would give to-day all I could, and 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 139 

get my people to give all they could, and ask 
the children to help, that we may send money 
to be paid to the Home Missionaries. 

And the king shall answer and say unto all 
of us who give all we ought to-day : " Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 



A FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERMON. 



" Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and 
nations that knew not thee shall run after thee." — Isaiah lv. 5. 

This is a foreign missionary text, and I am 
going to preach to the boys and girls, many ot 
whom belong to mission societies, a sermon that 
will show how glad we ought to be that there 
are promises like our text in the Bible, and men 
and women who are willing to be missionaries. 

Not a great many hundred years ago the men 
and women who were our ancestors lived in Great 
Britain, for most of us are Anglo Saxons, as 
you will sometime learn. They were heathen; 
their greatest god was the god of war. His 
name was Woden, for him the fourth day of 
the week was named Wednesday. His wife's 
name was Fria — for her the sixth day is called 
Friday. Their bravest, strongest son was called 
Thor, and from him Thursday had its name. 
The people then were very cruel, and used to 
kill men, women, and boys to please these idol 
gods ; and were you to go to England you could 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 141 

find the ruins of one of the great temples 
where boys and girls were killed. When meet- 
ings were held the people behaved dreadfully. 
It would not do to tell you what wicked things 
were then said and done. 

Over in Ireland about that time a captive boy 
was growing up, whom his parents called 
Patricius — you have heard him called St. Pat- 
rick — who was able, with the help of God, to 
lead all Ireland to become Christians. After he 
died one of his followers went to Scotland as a 
missionary, and a great many people of that 
country and of England became Christians. 

But there was at that time a bad Pope at 
Rome, who did not like the work done in Great 
Britain, and broke it up, and the land before long 
became heathen again. After a while there 
came a good Pope by the name of Gregory; he 
saw some captives for sale in the market at 
Rome. They were so beautiful that he called 
them angels, which sounds some like the way 
they pronounced English. Pie made up his 
mind to send missionaries to the country from 
which the captives came. The missionaries 
dreaded to go, but went, and were very success- 



142 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

fill. They baptized ten thousand on one 
Christmas day. The king and queen became 
Christians. 

Of course at first the religion which the 
people had was very rude. We would think 
that they were pretty near heathens, although 
they were called Christian. But as time went 
on and changes took place, the Christian religion 
got a stronger and stronger hold upon the 
people, until now the land is full of churches, 
and schools, and colleges, and the people as a 
whole worship God, who tells us to love and help 
one another. 

After the events of which I have told you 
had happened, many of the people of England 
came, as you know, to the United States, and 
here built up a Christian country. The very 
first thing that most of them did was to build a 
church and a school house, and so we have a 
Christian country. Just try to think how differ- 
ent it would have been in America had the 
heathen from China and India come here instead 
of the Christians from Europe, and yet there 
are some men, I am glad to say they are not as 
many as they used to be, who say it is not worth 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 143 

while to try to send missionaries to the heath- 
ens. Let me answer them by telling you a fable 
that perhaps some of you have heard. 

A long time ago the whole sea was full of 
fish, and everywhere the large fish would chase 
and eat up the little ones, the strong would 
trouble the weak, and often to please some of 
the worst fishes the very best would be caught 
and killed. At length in a beautiful bay there 
came from the sky a new fish, with a different 
life from all the fish of the sea, and he told the 
other fishes how much brighter, and better, and 
happier life would be, could all the fish help one 
another and do good. The fishes in the bay 
heard what he said, and began to live as he 
bade them, and a prosperous life it was. But 
all the while the rest of the sea was full of 
cruel life and wretched, and although there were 
many of the happy fish of the bay who were 
ready to take their lives in their hands and go 
into the wide sea and teach the cruel fish to 
become kind, there were not a few in the happy 
bay who said it was a waste and shame to do 
any such thing, and so they simply got all the 
good they could out of their life in the happy 



144 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

bay, and let the whole sea remain in ruin and 
shame, until, for such a selfish crime, God sent 
leanness upon them, and the happy bay became 
as selfish and cruel as the wide sea itself. 



TRUST AND FEAR. 



and ye perish from the way, 
when v His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they 
that put their trust in Him." — Psalm, ii, 12. 

This, the last verse of your Sunday-school 
lesson to-day, sums up all the duties of the 
lesson. It tells you two things, to fear God 
and to trust Him. 

I have thought that perhaps some of you 
may have wondered how any one could fear and 
trust the same person, and I want to show you 
that we trust because we fear. 

If we were living in a large city where there 
were a great many bad men who needed to be 
watched, caught, if they did wrong, and pun- 
ished, we would all want a mayor of whom the 
bad people would be afraid, and the more afraid 
they were of him, the more would the city trust 
him. If we could know that he would call out 
the soldiers and shoot the men who stole or 
murdered, we could feel very safe. 

This is true in almost everything. If I 

145 



146 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

should make up my mind to go to Chicago to- 
morrow, and go down to the depot to take the 
train, I should expect to find a locomotive or 
engine that I would be afraid of. I should 
trust myself to it, and expect to go to Chicago 
that afternoon; but if I should say when I go to 
the depot, " I will not go on the cars until they 
put on an engine that would not hurt any body 
if it run over them or run against them;" it 
would be of no use to trust such an engine. I 
would never get to Chicago if I did. 

If I should climb up into the bell tower and 
look over the railing, and you should ask me to 
get up on the railing and jump off on the side* 
walk, I would tell you that I was afraid. 
" Afraid of what?" you would say. I would fear 
that the power of gravitation, as men call it, 
would draw me down so fast that when I came 
to the ground it would kill me ; and yet I would 
never have dared to climb into the tower if it 
had not been for the power of gravitation. It 
is because we trust in gravitation that we build 
our houses, and climb where it is high. If it 
were not for this power we would be afraid to 
get on top of a hill, lest we should go up from 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 147 

it and never come back to the earth again. We 
trust the power of ^gravitation, although we 
fear it. 

So you see that the man who wrote this psalm 
is asking you to do something that we all do 
every day when he tells us to trust what we 
fear. 

And when you think of it you will learn that 
it is because we are afraid oi God that we trust 
Him. 

If God was like a man, weak and unable to 
direct the world, we should live in fear all the 
time; we could not trust Him at all. We would 
not dare to go on board a ship, for we would 
not know but the wind would be stronger than 
God, or the waves would be more powerful than 
He; but when we learn that the wind and the 
waves are in His power, that they are afraid of 
Him, then, though we are afraid of them, and 
hence might be more afraid of Him, we trust 
Him. 

But there is another reason why we should 
fear God. It is because He is good. Take two 
boys who go to school. One of them has a 
good father, the other has a father who is very 



148 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

bad. He will tell lies and swear and steal. 
Which of the boys will be afraid of his father 
if he is asked to play truant or cheat his play- 
mate, or do any other bad thing? It will not be 
the bad man's boy, for that father would not 
care what his boy did, no matter how bad it 
might be. It would be the good man's son; for 
he would know that if his father could find out 
what he had done he would punish him very 
severely. And yet, which of the boys would 
trust his father? It would not be the son of 
the bad man, for he would never know what 
his father might do or say; but it would be the 
son of the good man, for he would know that 
his father always would do right. 

Now, there is nothing in the world that any of 
us should be so thoroughly afraid of as God, 
if we do wrong. He hates the wrong and will 
punish it, and no one can punish so hard as He; 
but at the same time he loves the right, and will 
reward it, just as much as He hates and will 
punish the wrong. So that if you and I want 
to find any body whom we can trust more fully 
than any or all else, it is He whom we also fear 
the most, because He is both strong and good. 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 149 

And now I think you can understand better than 
you have before, what your lesson means when 
it says, " Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye 
perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled 
but a little. Blessed are all they that put their 
trust in Him." 



VICTORY OVER DEATH. 



" Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory." — I. Cor. xv, 57. 

You boys and girls are too young to remem- 
ber when the news came that General Grant had 
taken Vicksburg and General Meade had con- 
quered the rebels at Gettysburg, sixteen years 
ago this month of July. And how did the 
people of the North behave when they heard 
this great news? Flags were thrown to the 
breeze, cannons were rlrecl ; all who loved their 
country and believed in God said, "Thanks be 
to God who giveth us the victory." 

But at that time there were some good people 
who loved the flag, who cuuld not help weeping 
most bitterly, although they were glad to have 
the people rejoice over the victory, for they 
had sons who fell on the field of battle to gain 
the victory. 

It is true of every victory that it costs much 
to gain it, and those who suffer most must have 

150 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 151 

sadness with their joy. The victory of which 
the text speaks is like all others in this. It is 
Christ's victory over death, and it cost our 
Lord's life. 

But there is one very strange thing, that 
many of the friends of Jesus, although they 
know that Jesus has gained the victory, act as 
though He had been conquered. 

When a good man or woman dies, or a 
Christian boy or girl, it is a victory for Jesus. 
Death may have snatched away their bodies for 
a while, but the Christian is unhurt, is taken to 
be with Jesus, and when he wants his body 
again all that he cares to have of it is returned. 
It is a complete victory. 

But for all this, there are many of us who act 
as though death had gained the victory, and 
we walk about as though our friends were dead. 
Jesus says they are asleep, and certainly we 
ought to believe Him. And while of course it 
is very hard to part with those who leave us, 
and we cannot help feeling badly, we ought to 
try to believe that they are alive and victors. 



152 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

I have been reading about the way in which 
the Christians who lived 1,600 years ago felt 
and acted when their friends died, and 1 hope 
God will help us to feel as they did. They did 
not say anything about the cruel grave and the 
dreadful tomb, but they called the places where 
they buried people cemeteries, and when you 
come to study Greek you will learn that ceme- 
tery means a sleeping place. 

One of the places where they put the dead 
bodies was in the Catacombs, an underground 
city beneath the city of Rome. There were 
streets, passages, and alleys, the length of which 
added together is over nine hundred miles, and 
I suppose more than five millions of people were 
buried there. Some of these were heathen, 
many of them Christians, and you can tell 
many of the Christian burial places by the sign 
of victory on the slab at the grave. 

If ever you go to Rome you can go down into 
these catacombs, and see the names of these 
Christians and the signs of victory. You 
would have a torch in your hand, and after your 
eyes had become used to the dim light you 
can see places just large enough to hold a dead 



SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 153 

body cut in the soft rock, one above the other 
like sleeping berths in a ship, or as a man has 
said, like shelves of a library where Death has 
laid his works. 

Right beside the slab is a little bottle or vase 
to hold the tears which friends could not help 
shedding, while on the slabs you can read such 
words as these: " Marius, youthful soldier, who 
lived long enough, for he gave his life and his 
blood for Christ. In peace." And another: 
" Alexander is not dead, but lives beyond the 
stars, and his body rests in this tomb." And 
another: " Here sleeps Gregorius, friend to all, 
and enemy to no man." In one place that was 
opened a few years ago was found the remains 
of a little girl, and by her side the doll she used 
to play with when she was alive. On some 
slabs are pictures of a palm branch. Those 
who were buried there were martyrs, and be- 
cause they had died for Jesus this sign of victory 
was put on their burial place. On others there 
is a picture of a dove on the cross, which may 
mean that when there is a cross of pain the 
dove of comfort comes. But the one I want 
you to remember the longest is a picture of the 



154 SERMONS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

good Shepherd, carrying a lamb on his shoul- 
ders, while two other lambs walk by his side. 
For that tells in a picture the teaching of your 
text, and of that beautiful Psalm, " Though I 
walkthrough the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy 
rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." 



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